Revisiting battles like Cannae in True Size has always been one of my dreams and I'm very excited about potentially using UE5 to correct historical misconceptions. You can support our continued efforts by checking out some of our maps and merch on the store: invicta-history-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/all
Look at orbital satellite data ground penetrating sensors into the ground to illuminate the ancient river channel back then. Like they do in S America jungles to find ancient settlements.
The problem is Is that you didn't mention The rout or The dust so even if there was not rout The cammanders would not be able to see the incoming libens
Your theory on the wedge disrupting the roman charge/pilla use doesnt make sense given the romans would have experience of disjointed engagements due to their checkerboard deployments
Part of your model that i believe is overlooked is the idea that every roman will nicely line up and correspond to every Carthaginian, if you think of mob /crowd dynamics I think there will be a bias for the romans to target the tip of the formation or on the portion of the diagonal that is closer to them, which will bunch them into the center, so even if the lines both start at the same length as eachother natural bias toward the closest enemy will cause them to bunch up. which could easily be a half kilometer of shrinkage over such a big difference because if each guy only biases half a meter toward the center when your the 5,000th man thats alot of length lost. This also then explains how inverting the formation sucks in the romans even more and open opportunity for flanking.
Also first person view would be better than first person for scale, for obvious reasons, being able too see the whole battlefield is much easier in third person
Centurions would keep the men marching in a straight line, this is not a mob of protestors these are trained, disciplined soldiers who know how to march in formation, even if they lack experience.
@@ramonruijgt4532 you have to keep in mind that these are tons of soldiers of varying quality and due to the enormous size hard to centrally control and manage. The only thing in common is they all wanted to remove the Punic general from their land and were extremely over confident due to their army soze
When the Carthaginian center fell back, this caused the Romans to be pulled to the middle like a funnel. The Romans kept moving forward, thinking they had broken through but they were really just filling space, eventually compacting themselves together; losing cohesion and greatly shortening their line. I think you overlooked this crowd dynamic that explains how the Libyans were able to hit the flanks. The Romans were already being pressed together BEFORE they got hit in the rear by cavalry.
Ok, so the vast number of men in the center of the Roman mass cannot raise them arms. The vast number of men in the center of a cohesive formation don’t fight anyway. The men at the periphery are the ones thrusting spear and sword towards the enemy. For one to believe the myth of Cannea , you have to believe that the Roman soldiers who are actually in contact with the Carthaginians- just give up and do not even fight back.
@@finallychangedit4926 The "first hand accounts " do belong to writers about 150 years later though ... In a period in which the drama of "we were so hardly beaten but still victorious" was as powerful as weed today, so to speak. While all the others exaggerated the numbers of their enemies, Romans did almost the opposite (almost) Rome always depicted themselves into a weird epic underdog: "we were many but stupid but we learned and won !"... When I look at all their losses in the 1st and 2nd Punic wars and add the numbers, it is a wonder Rome was still populated after that ...
@@krixpop in the same way that a lot of ww1 media shows off the front line to be muddied and waterlogged as they were in 3rd Ypres, with the fortifications similar to those found in Verdun, with the mass scale assaults and death of the somme. People grab at whatever the most extreme for is and even just outright lie to make it more horrific to make its overcoming seem even more insane.
@@krixpopRight? When I found out how many people died just trying to sail to Africa it blew me away. That’s just a straight up 100% loss of men, money, materials, and time without the enemy expending any of those things themselves.
You seem to disregard the phrase used repeatedly: "pulled into the centre". You don't even touch what that would mean. It would mean that the Roman flanks would keep moving in towards the centre. Not straight ahead but diagonally. THAT creates the flanks you are missing. Remember that they are noobs and would rather attach the ones their pals are already fighting rather than the angry dudes that are staring at them straight ahead. And all of a sudden the entire problem disappeared almost as if the historians simply told it true from the get go.
@@Zathaghil not only that, but it’s got a lot of variables, depending on where the armies where, how they deployed, how the officers performed. It all comes to a crescendo where you get cannae. I also point out. If you have difficulties with a massive battle line. You might opt to double up your lines to half the distance and make communication easier. You cant expect 10 minutes between orders being issued and received in a battle where 5 minutes can make a difference.
Additionally, the wedge formation of Hannibal's center would pull the Romans towards the center and cause them to bunch up. A soldier's instinct in battle would be to engage the nearest enemy, which causes both sides of the line to converge towards the bulge in the center. This is exacerbated by the green Roman troops.
@@Zathaghil exactly!!!!!!! Absolutely correct. Couldnt have Said it better. I can visualize it perfectly. Another thing that was probably AGAIN overlooked... The second battle on the other side of the river that Takes place simultaneously, when the romans try to storm the carthaginian camp! It is mentioned iirc! That's very important because at the late part of the battle (when the romans are almost or mostly defeated) Hannibal rushes to help and drive the romans back. I cannot emphazise it enough how crucial the timing is in this battle. And the timing again was wrong with the cavalry Engagements. The gallic and carthaginian cavalry in the left/ roman right, were still fighting the last remnants of the roman equites. At about 2/3 or 3/4 of this cav Engagement, the infantry frontlines met. Timing. Timing!!!
There is a fair point here. Particularly about how the cavalry really won the battle. But I have four points of constructive criticism: 1) I think you all are leaning in a bit hard on the "it's so massive" and "you can't see what's going on". Military historians and strategists have long dealt with the concept of large armies and non-instantaneous communication lines. To say their diagrams are fundamentally flawed grants them little credit to understand how large armies work. They would have had extensive experience with large armies in formation; let's just sit on the Napoleonic Wars for a second or two. 2) You all didn't model the solider rank depth extreme enough. Sure you've tripled the standard/expected depth for both the Romans and flanking Iberians, and that is reasonable. But perhaps it's too cautious? What if the rank was 10 times deeper? 20 times? That would really stand out to historians Livy and Polybius, indicating that the order of battle wasn't something they'd ever come across and worth spending a few words on. They might not have been explicit on how many lines on how deep the rank was because they were political historians, not military. As far as we know, they had no personal military experience to know what would have been reasonable. They simply knew Varro played this very differently. 3) I think you've been far too dismissive about the positioning of the river. Rivers can change considerably in only a few dozen years, let alone two thousand. I'd argue hard that the river was at the edge of the flood plain at the time. Varro knew he was deficient on the flanks in terms of cavalry; he probably assumed he'd lose those battles. But if the rank was long enough on the flanks, it might buy him enough time to break Hannibal's center and destroy his lines of communication. In that scenario, it makes sense that Varro would want to be in a very narrow 3 km passage (with an extremely deep ranked set of lines) between the city/ridge and river in order to minimize the movement of the cavalry. 4) The Romans most certainly broke the center. I don't think there is any way it could have been a fighting withdrawal. At least in the extreme middle. They kept pushing and got out of formation. Was it a defeat in detail? Unlikely; the Carthaginian center was too thin to simply turn and push back on the Romans. We know the Romans were green troops; we should assume the officers were green too. If they broke the center, started chasing and couldn't reform because their lines of command communication were too far away in the back getting killed by cavalry...you'd probably just stand there and try to figure out how to get back to camp without much luck.
I would say at least with the 1st point to keep in mind the Romans wouldnt have made their formation shorter than the Carthegian one if they could. So the possible length of the Roman army kinda determines the length of the Carthegian one and vice versa. And there's a reason why depth has diminishing returns, a small number can hold back a much larger group thats way deeper than them. So imo given the likely depths of BOTH sides, whats presented sounds realistic in a way thats long enough to anchor both sides flanks while not leaving the Romans too narrow or th3 Carthegians too thin/thick
He labels the diagrams as fundamentally flawed because they are. To be readable on the page, the battle lines have to be depicted as far deeper than they ever were. This makes tactics or manoeuvres appear plausible when an accurate, adequately scaled diagram would immediately reveal their unlikelihood. It is also extremely unlikely that the Romans would deliberately expose their flanks to Cannae and Hannibal would not take advantage of that in some way - and the sources do not mention that at all.
Im not sure if this adds to your point but history marche has a really good video on cannae for my opinion, - ruclips.net/video/xjnck2XvuPQ/видео.html here is the video in question,
Dude started as a gameplay channel now is debunking a whole pivotal moment in history causing upheaval between historians. West Point will be giving you a call soon 😅
Thanks for the shoutout but I do want to note a few things: 1) Gary Brueggemen was actually the one who started digging in on this topic first with to-scale models and pointed out a lot of the issues which I am now following up on with a more detailed model in Unreal Engine. 2) The whole of Cannae is far from debunked but I think we've helped point out some glaring flaws with most depictions and identified new problems that warrant further investigation. 3) I would very much like to work with academics to further refine this model and provide commentary on the questions it raises. To this end I've actually gotten in contact with Adrian Goldsworthy to see what he might have to say.
@@InvictaHistoryKeep up the great work. Also, wow! Adrian Godsworthy?! His book on Augustus is my favorite Roman Biography ever! I hope he reaches back.
Interesting as always, and love the work you've put into the video, well done! But, I would argue that titling the video as "The Big Lie" and then going ahead to say, "what we've been told about Cannae has been riddled with lies," but then presenting a version of Cannae which is based on a lot of assumptions as well, is misleading. As others have mentioned in the comments, a lot might be gained from archaeological evidence, and if not, new assumptions should not be made, especially about things we (as armchair generals) think may have been unlikely: Why could the two armies not have faced off in the narrow gap between the river and Cannae? Why wouldn't the Libyans have been in a deeper formation? Where was the river really? Don't get me wrong, if this was what really happened at Cannae, I'd be eager to accept it, because even if the story of Cannae isn't as cool as the one we're used to, the truth is what really matters. In this case however, you don't seem to give us a more truthful account of what happened, simply a new story, which seems to be more consistent with some assumptions you've made. If this is indeed how Cannae happened, I'd accept it, but I would need more hard evidence than what you've given, especially while purporting that you're "rewriting the history of Cannae". Based on the sources and what we've seen so far from other sources, I see no problem with the way they present it. Even History Channel's version, while not complete, isn't erroneous. When a history buff watches that, they understand that of course a million things are being simplified and compressed into a 10-minute video. But the basic idea is still the same: the Romans were too deep, and were drawn into a wedge, and were then enveloped. When you title a video as being one which exposes the lies previously told, I as a viewer assume that what I've heard before was completely wrong, and you have new evidence to correct that view. In this video however, you basically gave us the same version we've seen before, and the things you did change, were based on assumptions you'd made, many of which seem unsubstantiated to me. I don't mean to be a sourpuss here, pissing on your battery: I understand you must have put a huge amount of energy and time into this video, and it shows: it's fantastic! I would just say, rather than titling a video as strongly as "The Big Lie" just to get clicks, maybe be more aware of the fact that what you're doing here might not be exposing some "maniacal lie" purported by "incompetent RUclipsrs", but rather, as with any good historian or scientist, you're giving a more in depth and more accurate view of what may have likely happened.
The big lie title is a bit clickbaity. It did get me to watch the video though, so I'd say they were successful there. I'd also argue that they're not entirely wrong in calling it a big lie. Nobody has really mapped out how much space the armies would take up on the battlefield. Up until now the picture painted by historians was frankly outlandish and didn't really fit with how we know ancient armies organized themselves. Even the "period" sources were stretched to the absolute limit by the most popular tellings of Cannae, and those sources themselves were written decades after the battle by piecing together secondhand information. The Romans getting disorganized in their advance, walloped in the cavalry engagement, and then ran down from behind by enemy cavalry sounds fairly realistic to me. It doesn't require the Romans to use outlandish tactics or be wildly incompetent.
After watching the whole video, I don't see a big lie. All that changed was the location of the battle and making the lines more stretched out. The "simulation" was a joke. It was just digital renderings of a scene. I'd much rather see the scenario wargamed out in Total War. You could do a 1:10 scale by increasing HP by 10 and reducing movement speed to 1/10.
@ctrlaltdebug the scale is really important for how the battle played out. A more compact battlefield allows much more maneuvering by Carthaginian infantry in both the center and flanks.
@@waysidetimes9226 That's exactly the problem with clickbait though, isn't it: one is enticed to click on a video because of a catchy title or a cool thumbnail, but is then disappointed with the video itself. I'm not saying this video is true clickbait, as the video is not trash, but the fact that the title gave me a very different idea of what I got from the video in the end, is disappointing from a channel which espouses to be truthful. And again, I agree with your view that the tight formations seen in other representations aren't exactly consistent with what we usually see from armies of the period, but again, that is not a basis for evidence, merely for doubt of the old version. To many people today it is inconceivable that the Earth is round, and so they doubt evidence that's been around for millennia. Doubt is always good, as it leads us to new discoveries, but merely doubting the old theory (which has worked so far), isn't enough to disprove it, and definitely not enough to prove the new theory. If one presents a new theory which seems to work better in terms of what one would expect, it must also be backed by evidence. Here, it seems the strongest evidence is the very fact that the author doubts the realism of the old representation of what happened at Cannae. That's not enough. You say the old version is "outlandish". I would argue it's merely strange, not inconceivable. And just because a battle seems to have gone differently from how we would have expected, based on how things usually went at the time, is not evidence that it didn't happen. There are many examples of commanders making seemingly stupid mistakes, but which may have been prudent at the time, based on the extreme circumstances they found themselves in. Sometimes luck was on their side and we hail them as genius victors, other times their gambit failed and history names them idiots. To me, the older version we've been told is not outlandish. I'm not an expert in military tactics, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but since we're discussing this, let's discuss: the Romans had been beaten time and again by Hannibal, badly. But, they knew that they're heavy infantry had broken (or almost broken) his centre before. The only reason he had won every battle so far, was the fact that he had been able to outmanoeuvre them in various ways. I can imagine this whole situation pushed the senate and the Romans to the brink of madness. Something had to be done! For Roman commanders on the field, it's easy to imagine them being under a lot of pressure to prove themselves against Hannibal, but also to not lose another army to the man in a risky attempt. We know that they didn't give battle when Hannibal presented such opportunity on the other side of the river. However, in the tiny space between the city (and its hills), and the river, they must have seen that Hannibal would have little room to manoeuvre. In my mind, facing Hannibal here, and not anywhere else, would have been a brilliant move by the Romans. He can't outflank us, he can't put his cavalry to good use. Sure, we can't make use of our numbers as we would like to, but we've already seen that numbers don't really matter against Hannibal. Steamrolling his weak central infantry quickly, and then use superior numbers to either get rid of his cavalry or to scare them away, seems a prudent choice to me. It is very different from tactics used during that era, but what other options are left, when facing "the devil himself"?!?
But he ASSUMES the armies don't have space because he ASSUMES where the battle SHOULD be, disregarding even how much the river changed over time@@waysidetimes9226
Nothing new was presented here. The cavalry battles on the flanks and the subsequent cavalry attacks on the Roman rear have always been noted as the critical parts of this battle. Hannibal used a crescent formation to blunt/slow the Roman infantry, sacrificing his allied infantry to buy time for his overwhelming cavalry strength to finish the battle. There was no need for a "controlled withdrawal", because Hannibal knew Roman weight of numbers in the middle would naturally produce the withdrawal. Hannibal probably gave these orders to his infantry, "No matter what happens, don't break and run, or we're all dead." Hannibal gambled on cavalry success and timing, because that's all he could do against such odds. I would suggest the cavalry battles were concluded in a much shorter period of time than any historian has noted. I would also speculate that the cavalry attack on the rear disrupted Roman command and control, eliminating the messenger rider, signal banner, and signal horn systems. At some point, the Roman infantry had no idea of the disaster unfolding, until the troops in the back began piling into the ones in front. However, I think this video did an excellent job of showing the numbers involved, the scale of the battle, and the topography. Thank you for the time spent producing this content.
Yeah, as I was told ages ago by my old Latin teacher, the front Roman troops had no clue what was going on in the back. Communication was made difficult by the immense density of the roman lines, the chaos of the battle, the double leadership role of the roman generals and yeah the succesfull cavalry attack by the Cartaghinians probably worsened that even more, as a result nobody knew what do anymore on the Roman side, so they did the only thing they could, try to move forward in the breach. If you contrast that with Hannibals approach: disctinct units with clear roles: center-flank-cavalry, and laying down a rough plan for his generals before the battle started.
As an archaeologist I got one question concerning the position of the battle 🤔. I don't know, what has been done on that behalf in the area of Cannae, but in Germany we also often work with concentrations of findings, mapping them and such. Typical, there are large concentrations of findings, where a battle took place, even with looting and so on afterwards. You seem to only work with the literatur, which can be misleading, and confirmation by the terrain. I suggest, trying to solidify your thesis by archaeological findings, which are much more facts than written sources. But as I said, don't know, if thats avaiable. Also Rivers can move quite a bit, as you mentioned. Often in geology or also archaeology there are maps of river movement based on excavations or probes from drilling and such. Don't know if there is for this specific area, but might as well be something to look into. I like your approach so far and you questioning established theories, that's how science works 😊 PS: If you want to publish pictures from your simulation in close ups, make sure to use a player model true to that era, your's wearing a niederbieber helmet or similiar and lorica segmentata, which does not fit the time. But I assume, that was just to show us insights here in the workflow video :D
Yeah, the changes can be massive... I don't think there is a single known in detail big Medieval battle from my country's history where the battlefield is even remotely close to what it was. All the rivers have been regulated, straightened, dams everywhere, swamps dried up, forests cut down, medieval forts swallowed by cities... nothing can really be recreated.
Archaeology is indeed super helpful for history, but please, explain how can it be helpful to reconstruct tactics of a battle? The position of the river aside (that is more geology than archaeology ˆˆ), how can archaeology told us about the depth of the roman formation, or the way the carthaginian center behaved during the battle? How can we learn anything from Cannae's battlefield about what happened? He's using literature sources, because they're the only sources that describe how the armies behaved, finding the arms and armours of the dead will not tell us how they were used ˆˆ
@@krankarvolund7771 He uses the literatur discribtion of the terrain (where is the river, where is Canae etc.) to possibly locate the battlefield. He then uses his estimated battlefield, to argue how thin and long the line could be stretched between river and hills on the right. In this chain of arguments the exact battle location would be helpful and that could be located more exact and reliable with archaeology. Indeed, the movement of river would be more geology rather than archaeology, but since in archaeology there are often probes done for locating findings/buildings and this is a area full of roman era archaeology, it is quite likely, that as a byproduct of excavations, data on the original riverposition was collected. So I would suggest to help proof your thesis with a wider variety of sources, including archaeology, not only rely on one source (literatur). On top of this, archaeology can indeed help with the analysis of roman battle tactics, if done right and large scale. If you google "Battle of Harzhorn", which is an area in germany, you'll find, that through lost shoe nails of roman military sandals the path of the soldiers uphill could be clearly followed. Also the location and rotation of bolts from manuballistae showed not only, where the enemy stood, that was shot upon, but also, where the firing roman soldiers were positioned. The location of parts of roman wagons shows, where those were moving through, when they were attacked by the germans. And the location and rotation of german spearheads tells us, where the germans started a major attack on a roman position. Ah, and don't forget, what archaeology contributed to a better view on the disaster in Teutoburg forrest (Varus). Archaeology has a lot of potential, if the position and rotation of findings is correctly documented on a large enough area. Even if there is not much evidence in literatur.
Okay so as someone who has discussed this battle regularly with his father (a professor) over more than 35 years, my understanding of the inverted crescent is that the Roman army started infantry line to infantry line with the enemy, and the Romans at the front were so green (not just newly raised legions but the least experienced members of those newly raised legions), they started charging toward the point of the centre. As Polybius wrote, the Romans "were hastily closing toward the enemy centre and those enemies who were giving ground". He implies - to my understanding at least - that the Romans were moving toward the centre as they advanced. Since formation fighting is all about playing "follow the leader" the slight bulge in the Carthaginian line therefore led to the Roman lines not advancing in a straight line, but advancing as though in a (very gradual) funnel. This would likely ending up with the front of each legion bumping up against each other, starting to compress each legion's front slightly (as compact as they already were). Over the width of the battlefield this slight narrowing with each legion would narrow the line to the point the Libyan infantry on each flank didn't have a proper formation in front of them, letting them more easily get most of their lines to the enemy flanks. I'd really like to see how that looks in your model. I'd think it would lead to enough narrowing to allow the Lybians to start to move around to the sides of those flanking legions. It may help explain some of Livy's and Polybius's descriptions of the Lybians on each side facing toward the centre as they enveloped the lines. I'd agree that by far the biggest factor would have been the Carthaginian cavalry charging in and that the Carthaginian skirmishers would have been a big factor in the encirclement. So essentially my assumption would be that, based on the words of the sources, the "crush" started much earlier than the encirclement, and that by the time the Romans and Carthaginians made contact there was no longer any spacing between the Roman legions. So for the final shape of the encirclement I'd say it's still a pancake just a more squished up pancake. The simulation system you've set up is really good. I agree that the modern simulation software helps us to get a much better picture of what is going on with these historical battles. I'd just argue that a little more credence needs to be given to the historical sources to see if their version of events can be made to work as described at least to some degree.
it's important to note that the one of the commanders of the roman army dies very early in the battle and the other fled/was unavailable. this can make a huge difference in how an ary works
Jarrod. This means Roman soldiers from hundreds of metres to each side would ignore the opposition in front of them and work towards the centre. And it assumes that the other side of the line did the same thing in the heat of a battle .I think for whatever reason the Carthaginian Left? flank was so strong in forced the Romans in A sandwich effect does seem likely.
@@paulscottfilms Remember the limitations of visibility on the battlefield. Who is your reference point for your advance: the enemy a few hundred metres away or the men in the legion next to you, a few metres to your right or left? If you're not in the centre, really close to the enemy, it's the men next to you. They wouldn't have been able to tell they were advancing off line until it's too late. The conscious mistake would have been made only by the legions to the immediate right or left of the centre. They'd be advancing on an exposed flank of the Carthaginian formations that are advanced ahead of the unit to either side of them (even if it's only a few ranks exposed, this would normally be an easily exploitable advantage). From there it's a game of "follow the leader" - or rather "follow the guys to your left/right" to keep close enough to the legion next to you. At the extreme ends of the line, yes this would end up with the legions advancing to cover the flank of the legion to their right or left instead of advancing straight at the enemy, leading to them being "off line" by - I would guess - about a hundred metres over the course of up to half a kilometre in their advance toward the enemy. In other words, not enough of a "wrong line of advance" to be completely out of the line of advance of the Lybians on the Carthaginian flank, but enough of an exposed flank for them to get around to the sides, especially if they were already moving to encircle the enemy on those flanks... or at least that's my theory.
45:00 Yes but that is a massive assumption. If you say the lybians have a frontage of 2 divisions, your entire depth doubles! And then the Goldsworthy model makes more sense.
Agreed that the formation can certainly change. But one of the things I came to realize is that increasing the depth of the Libyans doesn't really matter. Either way it's not very reasonable to expect the Legions to be sucked in more than we showed in which case the added depth doesn't help. Furthermore the Libyans are so far from the center that any shape they might take on the flanks still equates to about the same travel time. So I think that the ultimate objective of the Libyan formation was to be deep enough to 100% hold the line and have reserves who are detached enough to redeploy when the time came
@@InvictaHistory I very much think that the "Implications of first contact" section around 103:30 was very fine contribution to describing the battle. Especially taking in the psychology of the unseasoned troops who had years of humiliating defeats and likely anxiousness to fight after lining up for battle the previous day, it seems very likely that flat formation of the Romans gave way to a disrupted charge as you say. What I think you missed in the simulation is how that eagerness would have drawn the Romans into the center and how much the Roman line could have lost it's width in that process leading you to the conclusion, "... it's not very reasonable to expect the Legions to be sucked in more than we showed..." Taking the view from the front ranks on the Roman middle, the Gauls are in range and those Romans begin the charge. The Romans in the front ranks on either side of the middle point are not within charge range but decide to start the charge anyways. That is a summation of what I believe your first contact disruption hypothesis. What I propose is that the front ranks of the Romans would charge for the closest target which because of Hannibal's curved line is not straight ahead but bent toward the center. If this excited charge continues down the line, than the front units across the whole line would draw toward a tighter and tighter middle of the line. Now look at the back lines. Your model showed that the backlines can't see much of anything in front and that is without noting the dust being blown into their faces as was related by Livy. What to do as green soldier as the front lines charge gets focused on the center and you can't see much of anything, well follow the person in front of you and hope you are facing the right direction. This would further compress army as the Romans move into the center. If you have seen crowds rush towards an entrance of a building from above, then you can see how the crunch happens. What problem this causes for your model is that the simulation keeps the same width of infantry throughout the entirety of the battle. The soldiers on your map stay shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole battle. That makes little sense when coupled with the fact that when you push in a melee you put your shoulder into it which requires you to adjust the axis of your body to make the shoulders and legs perpendicular to the enemy line as to opposed to the parallel your model showed. Or at least in the reenactments I've been a part of, when the shield clash happens, you put your left side toward the enemy and your fellow soldiers go from shoulder to shoulder to front to back with each other. This format could potentially collapse the width of the Roman formation by up to half while elongating infantry line to create the tradition blob we think of. Now, you can say, "so what, now the Libyans are 5 minutes from the center instead of 10 minutes from the center." But the Libyans don't need to make it to the center, they just need to make it to the sides and part of a now smaller back to leave nothing exposed but a cavalry sized hole. In your model, the Romans on the far ends of the infantry charge the Libyans and stay in formation behind that. But that is not what is described at around 20:10 in the sources. The sources describe the Romans following the Celts in the center and ignoring the Libyans(who may have been obscured by dust) till it was too late. "... objective of the Libyan formation was to be deep enough to 100% hold the line and have reserves who are detached enough to redeploy..." I love this conception of the Libyan's role. It definitely gives the idea that Hannibal was learning from the Romans in how they would filter in heavier troops to sure up gaps where lighter troops lost out. But instead of keeping the heavies in the back line, Hannibal kept them on the sides. A way that fits better with the sources statements, though, is to think of it more like the infantry equivalent of a Mongol feint retreat and encircle: lighter troops draw in the main body into an unorganized blob then heavier troops position on the sides smash. Only instead of Heavy Cavalry running lances through them, it's more like heavily armored guys pressing together like a vice till the cavalry came back. But, hey, that's not an expert talking, just defending what I was seeing in the sources you put up and some practical experience from reenacting shield walls with some buds over a decade ago. If you have read this far, thank you, and hopefully you can answer this question, "Did the back lines get to draw their swords and if so when?" Because something I was trying to figure out is if the back lines would keep their swords sheathed to stay ready with the javelins or seeing the charge start, get the swords out for close combat. If they didn't unsheathe their swords before the Libyans attacked, would they have been able to fight effectively enough using the javelin as a kind of spear in those close quarters if they couldn't get to their swords in time.
@@InvictaHistory Just a thought, but when it comes to crescent maybe another factor/result of it - other than disrupting the roman charge - was that it pulled the Roman flanks towards the center (the sources kind of allude to this) meaning that the Carthaginian flanks may not have been engaged much if at all, allowing the Carthaginian Libyans and extreme Gauls/Spaniards to advance and encircle the Roman whole.
@@InvictaHistory why putting them on the flanks tho? Why put his worst troops in the chenter the hardest point where fighting starts first and where the enemy is emboldent the most? Why not put the lybians there? To save them? Save them for what? Also they are specificly mentionend to attack the enemys flank. What could that have looked like.
@@InvictaHistory you just igored pne source, livy says there is a break thru and one Interpretation is that hannibal whos in the Center with the gauls his most unreliable troops, premarurly Orders the lybians to the Center as ir retreats, so that they are reafly when the gaulsl in the Center break to squeeze the persuing romans in, just as hannibal had Planed he said.
Wonderful analysis. However, I believe your modelling suffers from a fatal flaw, with respect to the interaction between cavalry and infantry flank. Given how fluid that portion of the battlefield is the side with the upper hand i.e. the lybians will always find a way to overwhelm the roman equitae; it's normal to assume that - in waves - the routing of roman cavalry is followed by blistering attacks on its infantry flank, which remember has a slightly larger exposed surface area. This might not sound like much, but if you think about it, it means that the cavalry does not have to win the flank outright in order to harass, they can do both, at the same time! And let me reframe this as follows, fruit of the disposition of the troops, a tiny section of the line that has NO tools to oppose its enemy unit counterpart has it such that said unit can freely harass, from a SOFT angle, using the type of weaponry they, the defenders are MOST weak too, a javelin to the RIBS. Now recall like before that these cavalry men need not even defeat their counterparts to get a shot at the flank, they can have a contingent dedicated to the sole purpose of making DEATH rain from the sky, from the flanks BLINDSPOT, and there is nothing the roman cavalry can do about it. So this is not a tiny gap, it was a most critical BLUNDER to have left both physical and metaphorical armpit exposed (think of the panic the sheer terror). Such that, as soon as this gap made contact with an endless barrage of lybian javelins, you can imagine the entire roman line coiling up as if its body had been struck with a dagger in an unprotected and sensitive zone, pain reverberating through lines, rolling up in a ball seeking protection. Misinterpreting this dynamic is what I think flaws your conclusion. But to make the full point, the idea of a roman army pressing for miles on end is idiotic of course. And where I think reality differs most from current descriptions, is that at first it werent even the carthaginians flanks pushing the roman flanks outright, as much as it was the romans curling up to avoid the punishment from the cavalry described above, seeking protection in a herd like fashion. To dig into how it plays out, as they do so, the flank elongates becoming thiner at its apexes while arching backwards - and towards the roman centre - like a paper folding onto itself. All the while this folding action is followed up with the carthaginian infantry slowly rotating to pin in place reforming the flank line. CRUCIALLY, the roman flanks pressure is being relieved by it's own front line that is pushing forward ever so slowly, and it is this slight give in carthaginian centre that enables the roman flanks to rotate into a new stable configuration. BUT ironically, this just means that the lybian cavalry can again resume the process of defeating their counterparts and harasing the flank. Leading to a cycle of stretch and press that has the flank fold on its own centre and slowly compressing those from the back and the side, the very dimensions the frontline needs to maneuveur. Notably, it should not take that many rounds of such harrow at the flanks to seriosly restrict the centre frontline's combat effectivness. Moreover, consider the naturality with which this happens as the romans at the front are being nudged along by their breathren at the back, so it is not as of they are being made aware of what is happening to their flank. Wherein, at the same time, a signal to disengage to the tune of a drum is not too difficult to follow if the roman press is slow enough, as an example, "one step back to the sound of the drum" is a simple enough drill. CRITICALLY the mechanical nature of the flanks pressing effect is a ripple that stems from each cavalry charge - cause and effect. So the general need more or less to see the charge, hear the horns, and look for signs of the quivering roman banners on impact to call the drum. So, while training the troops, drilling the troops, and placing the troops are key as they enable each cycle to happen automatically, without SEEING the pattern in the battleline and timing each STEP back to perfection there is no Cannae. And if you think about it, you can almost anecdotaly claim that Hannibal defeated Rome with a drum and his minds eye. But what is even more humbling is the fact that he saw ALL of this in a battlefield in his mind before it even happened. In all, the romans did not JUST push to their death, of course NOT, they were climbed upon, by an cavalry infantry pivot and any historian that has you believe this is fooling themselves. Thats why its called a feinging retreat with a double envelop in the first place, and this is candidate to one of its finnest Ancient exponents. It utilizes the psychology of the flank soldier that looks to the safety of the fold as he is being harassed and has him pressing on his fellows at the centre from the back, as he shelters himself away from cavalry projectiles by moving closer towards the "friendly mass". Eventually rendering them innefective, as the army simply cannot move, after enough compressive force has been applied. The general knows that if the centre holds for long enough, it is the flank soldiers FEAR that ultimately KILLS them all.
Great response. I appreciate Invicta’s attempt to understand the battle, but his conclusions were forgivably naive. Once the Roman army was encircled, especially by the highly mobile Libyan cavalry (historically such units often panic, route and overrun encircled infantry units even when those infantry outnumber their enemy. In fact, most battles in all of history were rarely decided by numbers, and instead most often by maneuvering, with the turning point coming at the moment of encirclement or a successful single or double flanking maneuver. Cannae was a phenomenal case of encirclement, wherein Hannibal’s army was able to neutralize the force strength of the Romans. Once he penned them in, and pinned them down the battle was decided. All that remained was how bitterly the Romans would contest the defeat that was already determined.
I think this is a very Astute comment that i would like to add into by noting that the center was being personally led by Hannibal himself and once the skirmishers fell back he very likely used them to plug gaps in the line and stabilize morale where needed. so even when there was some sort of breakthrough he had a ready reserve of bodies to plug the gap while he could reform and reinforce lines, even if it was behind the line as it were the whole matter of the day was a controlled fallback.
I think this is a pretty olausible explanation for a more pronounced arc, taking advantage of the green Roman soldoer ditching discipline and forming up a ball of their own accord.
I'd like to add, that I think Hannibal perceived a weakess in the Roman formations, in that they were drilled to be mobile "vertically" - advance and retreat - but very awkward laterally. The deeper the formation - the worse this flaw, so I'm guessing he set out to exploit this. He musta overloaded his left cav precisely because the legionaries have their shield on the left hand.
3.2 km is exactly 32 times 100 m. It looked like your layout had the infantry width of about 1.8km which is 18 soccer fields not hundreds or thousands of soccer fields. 1,8 km is a bit over a mile. A galloping horse would be about 12 mph so galloping the breadth of the infantry would take about 5 minutes. Which means a few minutes from the center to either side of the cavalry.
You are even more right than you know: a horse can gallop at way more than 12kph: they can get up to 40kph for a mile or so. Napoleonic and later cavalry tended to go at slower speeds as they rode in line and needed to maintain formation, but ancient cavalry used a wedge formation which was much easier to maintain so could go much faster. They could easily do a half mile in substantially less than two minutes.
This is excellent but I do think you might have considered the charge a bit more. Imagine you are a Roman just to the right of center. When you charge are you charging past the furthest forward Carthaginian unit to attack the slightly further unit that is directly across from you? Or are you going to trend towards the center that is closer to you? Multiply that by the thousands, plus officers trying to close up the line, and I think perhaps there was a lot more compression from the ends towards the center than you represented, which would presumably pull some of the Romans inwards and clear more of the Libyans to attack the flanks. Your model assumes that each Roman unit charged the Carthaginians directly across from them and I feel like that is a tad unrealistic and I think it is supported by the description of the charge in the source material.
YES! I remember reading that it was a psychological thing that sucked in the Roman towards the bulging center more than the retreating Carthaginians. The subconscious incline to engage the closest enemy, as opposed to the one at your direct (but farther) front. That would also mean that the Roman center, though much stronger than their opponent's, might have suffered from the fighting ability/cohesion-hampering effects of compression before even being encircled. That may have contributed to holding the Carthaginian center together for a little more time. I also suspect that the ''fighting retreat'' didn't have to be communicated to Hannibal's officer that commanded the center (forget his name, too lazy to look it up), but just the expected result of a small force trying to hold a stronger one. I would guess Hannibal's order just might have been to ''Just hold for as long as possible'' knowing that the front would bend naturally from the concentrated enemy force. If the center is indeed receiving more force from the compressed (and therefore concentrated) Roman assault, it also explains the end shape being a concave arc, which springs the trap.
@jonathanallard2128 it's the most impressive part of the whole thing, by leading front and center he made known to his troops that they weren't just meant to get slaughtered
@@jonathanallard2128 He could have just lead from the rear and without the morale boost from their leader maybe the center does actually get smashed. By being front and center the troops knew they weren't just bait.
Roughly 16-24k Roman legionaries survived, this is well known. The Roman’s called this a “total loss” because they banished the survivors to Sicily. These banished soldiers made up the core of Scipios army that finally defeated Hannibal. The army probably was between 50-60k men and they lost a little over half. Not crazy
@@charlescatt4607 Most battles in the ancient world would conclude with a 10% to 20% enemy loss at the very limit. Losing a third or, god forbid, HALF of your standing army is a catastrophic loss. Any other kingdom, city state, empire would be crippled, bankrupt and/or collapse just by the learning the news. Saying that the romans "just" lost a little over half of their army is like saying that the US airforce just lost half their jets in a single air battle... Just disaster! It speaks more of Rome not surrendering after this than Hanibal winning it.
@@hostedbysimples5416 Pitched battles in antiquity are incomparable to modern warfare. Up until almost WWI the concept of a "frontline" didn't exist since armies moved in single, or a few coherent formations with at the very best sporadic skirmishing between scouts and foraging parties leading up to the decisive battles. Whereas nowadays war is fought over multiple gradual engagements on a tactical level in order to achieve strategic objectives. Taking this contemporary notion that 10% losses makes a unit combat ineffective involves considering what their role as self-sustained formation, say a division, should be able to accomplish in their assigned sector without leaving that stretch of the front too porous, or downright undefended. There are numerous examples from antiquity up until early modernity where entire field armies had been virtually wiped out and new ones were mustered. Nevertheless one has to highlight it usually involved major empires, or nations but to break a lance in favour of the Romans, their martial society exalted just that notion, fulfilment through warfare in stark contrast to the merchant-mindset of the Carthaginians which could not conceive such a notion of "total war".
" *16-24k Roman legionaries survived* " The most quoted number is around 15k, most of them garrison troops. " *50-60k* " Romans say that their army was bigger. It's very rare to exaggerate *your own* numbers. " *they lost a little over half* " It's also very rare to exaggerate your own losses, and Romans say they lost 50-60k dead, plus some taken prisoner (4k-ish). What we know for sure is that they lost 30 senators. You'd expect that if half of the army somehow survived, the senators should be among them.
I always assumed that after Roman Calvary was beaten, the Carthaginian Calvary simply was attacking Romans from the rear in several places and running down any fleeing Romans after they have been flanked, not literally standing in place and fighting romans all day. I also assumed that’s how several Romans survived the battle, since not all survivors were from the cavalry. The army was not literally surrounded at first, it was just pinned in place in a way they couldn’t move without dying. With enemy cavalry free behind them and entire Carthaginian army in front of them, running away in panic would be suicide, so they stuck together, maybe trying to beat the Carthaginian infantry in front of them, with Hannibal and his men simply holding the line and killing anyone trying to break through them. Anytime the Romans walked back as a group, the Carthaginians followed and killed the front ranks until the Romans broke or were actually surrounded. At one point, the flanks and many other Romans could have decided to simply run for it, thousands got ran down by Numidian cavalry, while those in the middle were actual encircled like we see most of the time. Hannibal wouldn’t even need to fight romans all day after outflanking with the cavalry, simply keep them in place and slowly kill them systematically as they desperately tried to stay together and survive while those trying to escape were getting hunted down by his cavalry, with handfuls of romans actually making it out since Hannibal did not have enough cavalry to chase after them all and had to focus only on the largest groups of fleeing romans to charge at and kill either with slings, javelins or swords like we usually think they did it. Cavalry also wouldn’t have to run all the time, simply keep romans from scattering while the infantry finishes the killing and encircling that happened likely with skirmishers and other trolls at the end of the battle.
@ I wouldn’t say they inflated the number of their casualties. Also, didn’t Hannibal spent like 5 years in Italy after Cannae before going back to Spain and Africa? I feel like this is not getting talked about enough in the history books and channels. It took Rome around 5 years to kick Hannibal from their own backyard. Not even backyard. Hannibal was pretty much going around Rome’s home, smashing their stuff and killing army after army for 5 years before he was called by his own government to save their asses after they fucked up war in Spain. The man basically spent 5 years terrorizing and vandalizing Rome’s homeland for years. That’s gotta count for something
That definitely is very likely what happened but at end you snuck in saying carthaganians used trolls to hunt down the Romans. You can't drop a bombshell like that and not tell us more
I did not expect something this comprehensive and convincing. Needed to go to bed, watched the entire video. Didn't realize it was "feature lenght" and it's 01:54 am now. Great job!
Hi, I'm a historian, I really like your work, once I made a similar model, but with Paint 😅. Said this, I think that one thing that you have overlooked is that during the fight the Roman army wouldn't have maintained the gabs between the units. Also, I'm one of the few that thinks we shouldn't consider everything that happened as a predetermined plan. Probably Hannibal had simply a vague idea of what would happen
When he started talking about the huge lenght of the battle line and showing how small part of it any individual soldier could see, I thought he would draw the conclusion that the whole crescent shape is a construct by people analysing the battle afterwards, not part of any deliberate plan, and if it happened at all, no one on the battlefield would be able to see it anyway. It never made much sense to me to try to march 40 000 guys in a formation that is a couple of kilometers long doing fancy manouvering. It would take insane coordination to pull off.
@greghall4836 you are right, it is basically impossible for the people in the centre and on foot to have noticed such things. But you also have to consider that almost 80% of the people in the centre died. Probably, if it was really present, the moon shape would have been notified by the people of the cavalry, which also managed to escape.
@greghall4836 the point he made about the psychology of the charge is actually interesting. Imagine being a Roma, you start charging with your companion in the centre, but you have to run much more than them, at that point the Carthaginian soldiers on the flank would have fought tired soldiers. Maybe it was because of this that the crescent inverted its shape.
Exactly. The model is wrong because the Roman soldiers wouldn't be spread out like that in PARADE formation. They would be in BATTLE formation with interlocking shield and little to no space between each soldier. So the model should actually be TWICE as short in length. So either he picked the wrong terrain OR he didn't take into account that the flood plain may have been even wider in ancient times; compressing the battlefield between the river and the hills even more so. Consider this, the CLIFF at the Battle of Thermopylae NO LONGER EXISTS. How many Roman towns are buried under the dirt due to NATURAL flooding in of mud over 2000 years?!! The build-up of sediment over those same 2000 years could have altered the modern flood plain DRASTICALLY. The river should probably be much further east in certain bends of the river OR the hills would have extended further west but would have been eroded over time
I think from a soldiers or units point of view you're gonna drift towards the nearest fighting or the part of the enemy line that is giving way/breaking.. With the initial outward bulge in the Carthaginian army - that's initially towards the centre. If you're near the flank, you can see those big heavily armed enemy troops - you want to shy away from them if you can. When the catharginians start to withdraw - you're tasting victory and want to press that advantage where they are withdrawing, in the centre. On your flanks those big heavy armed guys are pressing in, and the deeper, roman lines get into the pocket, the more press there is on their flanks from the rest of the enemy. Everything is making you want to crush up towards the centre. Everything is compressing your line.
A plausible explanation for the cul de sac which is supported by the sources as well as the battle of lake trasimene is that the carthagenian center actually gave out (and maybe the wedge formation even was supposed to make sure the center gave out first) so that the imexsperienced romans instead of keeping the correct direction went for the path of least resistamce and funneled themselves towards the middle, helping to pronounce the crescent shape. Maybe the hole could have been plugged by reserves as it's said that Hannibal held the center at some point.
I think this makes sense - he put his Gauls in the centre and who weren't exactly known for being indomitable (and they were his most replaceable troops too). I think like other Punic battles the Carthaginians actually did rout, but Hannibal was effective enough to keep the rest of his army together and/or plug that gap.
Haven't watched everything yet but yeah, the romans were routed at Cannae. The fact that the senate punished the survivors and refused the ransom of captured troops proved that some kind of a rout happened. The troops are problematic in the senate's eyes.
Scapegoat. You are forgetting that key concept. Scapegoats are politicians bread and butter. And Roman military leaders were in fact also politicians. The only thing we can trust with absolute certainty is archeological evidence. You cannot assume that a rout occurred or didn’t occur unless we can find the battlefield and count corpses. Anything else is purely speculative.
@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael yes, but I'm speculating more on how did they suffered this much casualties. It's a mystery how hannibal inflicted it without causing some kind of a panic, rout so to speak. And it's illogical they sent away thousands of able bodied men away while suffering manpower issues at home that they set the precedent of using proletarii as mainstay of legionaires. My speculation is the men were so panicky and scared, there's a seed for accusation of cowardness, that the senate refused to accept them back into the society seeing that the people were already grieving so much and sent them away to sicily. If they "infected" the populace, they couldn't had kept the people from collapsing and would had surrendered. But yeah. They could had been used as scapegoats.
@@linming5610 The fact is rome could create new legions in a short time after the battle. How? DId the romans become adults in 2 years in such numbers and training? Probably many people deserted and counted as losses because deserting it was punished, so nobody could count a sh--t and for objective reasons new legionaries were not punished in many numbers, but officials were.
@@linming5610 Interesting take. Thank you for taking the time to reply. You could be dead on for all I can say lol My opinion is that if that many people all died in the same place, then we should be able to find some remnants of the carnage, but as far as I am aware, no one has found a site that fits the accounts of what supposedly happened. If Hannibal had really done so well against the Romans why did he just leave Italy altogether? Without actually doing any permanent damage to his mortal enemies. Why would Carthage demand he return? Why would he listen to them? I personally believe very little about what is written on the Punic wars to be true. When I look at all the myths and misinformation surrounding the second world war; which happened only yesterday compared to the Punic wars, and I just cannot be convinced by scant damaged and incomplete accounts. I make the assumption that the general course of the war matches the accounts but I am unconvinced of any of the specifics. Again thank you for taking the time to have a bit of discussion!
@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael all i can say is, these things is another topic that deserve their own discussion. I welcome disproving me based on the sources but if you block the discussion with, "i don't trust the sources so everything might be false or don't believe in anything so you're wrong" , you're just frustrating me bro. I do consider the possibility things may be vastly exaggerated but that's not what I comment here for.
On the time issue: Battles took (and still do) hours and hours. It was folks fighting each other with swords (in formations) for many hours. A slugfest. In the heap of battle, ten minutes fly by very quickly because of adrenaline. So I personally would caution to describe ten minutes as long in the context of a battle.
As I always hear the story told, it wasn't that Hannibal ordered his troops to perform in a certain way, rather he understood how the battle would evolve.
Yup, he was a master at understanding the flow of the battle, especially if he could dictate the starting conditions of said battle. He certainly knew his center would cave a bit, and he certainly expected the inexperienced Romans to tunnel vision and funnel into the perceived opening in the Carthaginian line. He just had to make sure the frontline didnt completely collapse and seeing as he knew his cavalry would be superior, it was just a matter of time and the anvil and hammer strategy was complete.
Dont forget that in battles like this the soldiers rotated and weren't constantly at the front fighting. When the romans got bunched up, which they were to start with, they probably couldn't rotate as easily, whereas the carthaginians could. This would have had a big impact on effectiveness
Sorry to tell you but that scene at the start of Episode 1 of Rome was fictional. There is no evidence or account of Romans rotating their front line during an engagement. There is definitely no indication of Iberians, Gauls or Lybians ever doing this either.
I have yet to come across any legitimate source that states the Roman rotate front troops during actual battle. They did rotate troops during lulls in battle but not like the ones in HBO. Atleast I have yet to come across any source that actually says so. I would imagine actively rotating troops during actual close quarters battle would be difficult to pull off given the chaos and noise.
@@Yunacons While this no way means that the Romans did in fact do this, as I'm not familiar with the sources of this topic, rotation of soldiers in the midst of battle did actually occur. I read a lot about medieval battles, specifically those that took place in the middle east, and this was utilized by Timur''s army.
Even if the flanking didn't happen, the return of the cavalry combined with kms long battle line would have been sufficient to encircle most of the army. The main factor in my eyes is the rawness of the Roman army.
Buncha battle hardened Carthaginians, Gauls, and Africans beat up on a buncha kids from Rome who were handed a sword, and drilled for a few months. Beyond that, many of the recruits came from allied cities who were already sensing that Hannibal was winning. Now imagine you're not even from Rome. You get called up into a militia that gets sent to join a legion. You're not a soldier. You were busy sowing your fields when they snagged you from the forum, more or less involuntarily. It would only have to go bad for a short time before you turned tail.
Not to mention Hannibal was 2 for 2 on humiliating defeats by this stage, which would have only added to the psychological disparity between the two sides.
@@singtothesilencethe Roman army had 2 grave flaws. They leadership was extremely overconfident due to the size of their army while the actual soldiers were terrified of facing Hannibal’s army. Combine this and the general inability to organize and control such a large army effectively and you end in disaster
I would say all your videos are very interesting, but this one, is especially interesting for me. I am an early medieval X.-XI. C. ''Viking'' reenactor and if we have the numbers at demos we do bigger battles. (50-200) fighters. Although these numbers do not get close to that level of armies but the idea of group psychology is very nice to be incorporated in your idea. Often I find myself battering away in the center of the line and believe me, the scope of vision and situational awareness is drastically reduced to a few meters in front of you and maximum one or two fighters to both of your sides. My brain knows I will not die, but the survival instinct during ''games'' like this is nearly impossible to suppress. Combine that with fatigue, prolonged exposure to severe levels of adrenaline, maybe lack of sleep, heath, cold. All these factors have massive effects on your subconscious. Sometimes I come across people who have not yet had the chance to experience the chaos of a battlefield (even if it is a hobby, it can get pretty intense), who proclaim that they could do this, that, hold a line, etc. Well, my answer to that is a solid no. Don't underestimate the power of your companions. If one guy next to you takes one step back, chances are high you will do too and there is no reason at all for the next in line would not do the same. True, I have no experience in real combat, nor am I a roman veteran with countless battles under my belt, I do not train daily, I have not experienced the thrill of life-and-death combat, nor have I smelled the stench of the dead, the screaming of the wounded (one exception to that when a dude got overrun by a horse, but still, it was one fighter and we all stopped and he got immediate medical care). From this I can assume a trained grizzled veteran would have had a much much higher threshold to factors like this and the fact that from the center it must have seen as if the battle was won, but still, the moment you have anyone behind you that is not your battle buddy, and wants to kill you, even the most favorable conditions can become total chaos and mayhem. So to conclude my text, it was lovely to see this detailed breakdown of the battle. On one hand, it must have been terrifying, but on the other hand, I would give so much to be able to experience something like this. (After which I would probably conclude it was not worth the trauma). Thank you so much for again stunning me with your content. Please keep up the breakdowns like this. Keep it up!!
I have done some reenactment fun fighting with about 30 of my buddies with foam-tipped swords, spears, and shields and can definitely attest to the mechanics of group-think. Even though we only played according to "touch" rules, the innate desire to not get hit is definitely there, especially when those who got "hit" had to run a good 400 meters as a punishment. You are constantly trying to be a chainlink that holds that line together, mostly for your own safety! When that unified enemy line gets close, it is almost suicidal to break away from your line and rush the enemy of or to try to hold your ground when your line falls back. It is far more effective for a leader to guide the effort to press forward or to fall back so that the integrity of the line is maintained. Related to Cannae, we did one scenario in particular where one team tried to stop another team from crossing a bridge and the "help" that some rear teammates would foolishly give by pressing up and pushing the front ranks towards the meat-grinder was extremely problematic and provides a vague idea of the problems of getting packed in. One needs at least a little space in order to operate effectively. But guys in the rear who were new to this whole game were eager to help somehow and needed to be taught (or shown by putting them in the front next time :P). I can only imagine what would happen if they were trying to flee through me...
The Golden Rule of Modelling and Simulations: Garbage in = Garbage out. The Dirty Secret of Modelling and Simulations: Our inputs are often garbage, but we try our best. The good ones will tweak their models and inputs until they reflect real life known outcomes. Real data is needed to validate models. Unvalidated models shouldn't be used to make conclusions.
They present a fun toy but even just the basic starting formations are so simplified/abstracted that it's worse than the simple diagrams shown in other works - at least for those it's obvious that they are abstractions.
@@mattickista The Black Art of Modelling and Simulations: When you really have nothing accurate to work with, make an educated guess based on your experience and hope for the best.
Yes indeed. I cannot recall a computer model I ever felt sure about. I couldn't get used to the absurd wagging tail on the horse A girl model on the other hand is entirely better
Great to see you reference the Ancient Warfare magazine, issues XII-5 and XII-6 - a great magazine well worth subscribing to. Really good to see you diving into this issue. Too many hobbyists ignore this width problem. Your linking to the sources is so refreshing. With the wedge, you imply rank and file for the Gauls - I don't think that's required. For example, with the battles against the Helvetii, especially Bibracte, where the battle seems to have seen the Helvetii pushed back (retreat) over a couple of KMs, but still fight back.
5:39 “The most simplified version is obviously going to be the History Channel one.” *It’s sad that we expect that nowadays. The inaccuracies have wandered that far.*
One thing the way I would interpenetrate the quote about the Romans Pressing in after the Carthaginians is that the men on the flanks were moving towards the center, this would also make a bit of sense with how you show that at the flanks the enemy in front is actually quite far away and thus it seems reasonable to push more towards the center as it looks like its giving way. Especially for the men in the rear of the formation as they would have a gap or at least the impression of more space in the middle, so the officers may think they're reinforcing success when all they're doing is leading to a human crush. And they probably wouldn't even really know this could be a problem due to the low training of the Roman army and even the men who were experienced they wouldn't have fought in/with a formation this dense so sending more men into "gap" probably isn't as much of concern with a "standard" army formation.
Also if the enemies are in a wedge, the the unit towards the cebter is closer than the unit in front of you, maybe the wedge really was more pronounced in order to incentivise the green roman soldier to charge towrds the center, ensuring confusion and makung the romans easier to flank as well as damoing the effectiveness of the assault the closer it got to the flanks.
it seems like the main issue the romans had was that they didn't maintain a second line at their rear if the front line got a to tight they could just order the guys behind them to stop pushing up until the cavalry arrived if the triarii and principes maintained distance they would have been hit hard by the cav but would have allowed breathing room to fight and reinforce
I myself have studied the Battle of Avarayr using the oldest (sadly, largely secondary) sources available on the subject. I share your pain and your satisfaction in deep-dive researching these subjects! *It’s fun to play the expert, then to realize that you’ve put in so much effort that you ARE the expert!*
Just look at Gaugamela battle scene from Alexander movie to see how big ancient battlefields were. Even number of troops was very close to Cannae, 100k Persians and 45k Macedonians.
Hmm I think I see an issue. None of the game models really take into account troop compaction. Game models always maintain space between soldiers but when drawn into the crescent the men didnt have enough space to maneuver. Just my two cents but giving way at the middle could have the effect of compacting the men at the center first when the retreating army starts to hold firm. After that you use the units at the side of the crescent to push in and create more compaction of troops. Then the cav rides down men who cant even dodge or move.
One thing I noticed that you glossed over was the part of the eyewitness report that the Romans concentrated towards the center in pursuit of the enemy. Consider if the entire Roman line started to charge when the centers met and never redressed ranks, that makes for a disorganized mob compressing towards the middle. That would cause something of middle ground between the sandwich formations you depicted and the traditional circle. This would also explain why observers would see it as a circle while it's more of a sandwich that blobbed a little to the middle. It seems to me that the initial crescent played far more role in this battle then how much they retreated. The retreat was most likely mostly important from the point of denying a more intense battle that would cause too many casualties for the line to hold, not so much for creating room. But it would also pull in the Romans from the sides towards the middle. One other thing I wonder about, the skirmishers, to me so does it seem natural that they would be the ones helping out with preventing any breakthroughs rather then the flanking forces. They would after all be resting up behind the main forces and pretty much ready to engage any breaches.
1:11:22 this raises a larger question. How important was flanking in general. With large, thin armies it is only a small area of contact yet this strategy has a gigantic presence in militairy history.
I believe there is a domino effect. Imagine for a second that we are playing with some kind of chess piece. Any chess piece that ends up in front of an enemy is "engaged" and cannot move. If a piece is threathen by 2 enemy peice, it is removed. This way you can easily see that a solid frontline makes an impassable wall, but flank it and its sides will fold like dominos and the situation devolves with enemy troops becoming free to encricle (your line keeps shrinking while they don't take any losses). This is obviously an oversimplification, but crushing the flanks makes the rear vulnerable and any army seeing their rear exposed in any way will start to panic (their only means of escape+help is being threaten). I also think that attack a flank will disturb an army's formation (the wings will start turning backwards towards the center as to prevent an envelopment), which might have occurred here and contributed to the Roman army's broken formation to become more like a "blob" (a very stretched out one, but still not the straight and rectangular formation they started with).
@@Tryford9 Exactly. There's a reason why people talk about "rolling up" the flanks. The furthest unit has to hold or the battle becomes completely untenable quickly. The first flanked unit already has to defend against the enemy battle line and the soldiers flanking them. If they rout, the next unit has to defend against their own opponents, the first unit's opponents and the flanking unit. And so on.
Amazing work. Just a small critical remark. I do not think the carthaginian skirmishers could have supported the center by throwing projectiles over it. As far as the javelineers are concerned, they had for sure exhausted their weapons during the initial skirmishes. Even in case they did not, throwing even a light javelin over a formation 30 meter deep is quite risky. Historical reenactement has proven that throwing anything ( except the plumbatae) more tha 30 meters away is quite problematic. The slingers could have indeed helped the center but at a heavy cost since, again, reenactement demostrated that often there is no absolute control over the trajectory of the shot. A mistake of few degrees would have inflicted lethal injuries to the celtic and iberian infantry. But it is safe to assume that eventually the skirmishers completed the encirclrnent. As you said, the decisive factor was, again, the cavalry. The Romans committed a stupid mistake: they did not support the roman cavalry with a couple of legions. Caesar found himself facing the same problem at Pharsalus and turned it to his advantage. Congratulations for your immense and meticulous work and for your channel in general, which is simply the best of the best.
my guess is that the skirmishers at the flanks went around the flanks while the ones in the center helped plug holes in the line also they probably thought to bring extra ammo in the rear for after the first phase of battle one thing I really wish total war would have impemented were non combat support like ammo/water/medical units to replenish guys who are tired hurt and out of ammo.
I disagree. First of all you can advance through the ranks and chuck your javelin from ten feet away from the enemy. Secondly, the reenactment you're referring to was done without an amentum/spear thrower. Javelins were always thrown with one, and furthermore, their javelins would have been lighter than the plumbata and that of the Iberian/celtic infantry. Reenactments done with an amentum demonstrate a range far in excess of 30m. These people were raised hunting with this weapon from when they were a child, they could hit a rabbit at 30m as a routine shot. Delivering a simple parabolic volley over the line of battle into that giant roman mass would be easy.
@smokeyhoodoo it is possible but it requires perfect co9rdination with the unut in front of you. Fo not gorget that the Celts and the Iberians were hard pressed . Letting other units penetrating and editing trough and from the ranks could have had distruttive consequences
I imagine some parts of the Gaulish line were probably thicker in some places or perhaps more entwined with the enemy definitely seems risky to toss them blindly into a battle.
The Triarri not turning around and facing the returning cavalry and or Libyans getting around the flanks doesnt makes sense to me unless there were holes that punched through the main Carthaginian line. Or the compression was so bad, the officers were trying to unfck the front that they didnt see the danger in the rear? Awesome to see the battle displayed and explained like this. Truly looking forward to the rest of this series
Don't forget the Roman skirmishers. They were behind the most of the Triarii and might have been blocking their view of the rear, covering the Punic cavalry's advance. The Triarii on the flanks might've seen it coming, assuming that this is not precisely where the "Lybians charged at the flanks" (I'd imagine the back line moving to flank the Romans instead of trying to get behind them or back to reinforce their center in case of breakthrough).
This is what happens when you over analyze and you start to question your own logic and then you so deep into it. You have to make mental gymnastics to justify it... Edit: We don't even know how the Romans engage the front ranks. We have sources of how they march, ranks, how they approach the enemy. But we have no sources of how they actually engage the enemy. This video is based on like 6 assumptions 1 of which is crucial (Deployment and engagement) which we have no information on.
Right. It is unlikely that the concentration of the line would be the same for both armies. I doubt they had a talk and decided > what say we keep the lines to 1.6 km old chap < I suggest that the Carthaginians were very strong on both flanks and cavalry , The skirmishers could have supported the main front attack
I'm sure I have said this before about your channel but seriously after studying ancient military history ( with a focus on Rome) for 50 plus years this sort of updated meticulous detail is exactly what I'm looking for!!! Thank you friend for all the "true size " productions.
I will admit that I am quite partial to Delbrück, but I have to point out that you used his old thesis for the location and orientation, which he later revised, most certainly in orientation. As Konrad Lehman pointed out, the line from Polybius that is often interpreted as "the Roman front looking south" is actually correctly translated as "the Romans took the position to the south"; so in actuality, the Carthaginians were the ones facing south. On the matter of the actual formation, the "crescent" - in both directions - might just be referring to the way the Libyan troops were positioned relative to the center; that is, in a deep column as opposed to flat like the rest, rather than any actual great bending of the line. This would be further accentuated as the center of the line would slightly bow out during marching; the line was probably intended and achieved as a straight phalanx. In the same way, the Libyans would probably have marched behind the cavalry rather than between it and the center, with the Roman phalanx somewhat longer than the Carthaginian one on both ends. A decent number of skirmishers on both sides (that is both Roman and Carthaginian) would have accompanied the cavalry on the flanks and fought together with them as well. As you correctly pointed out, the wast majority of the encirclement would have been done by the cavalry, whose attack in the rear would essentially have stopped the entire Roman phalanx as the back lines of the Romans were no longer pushing on the front and trying to turn around, yet unable to create a coherent front. The importance placed on the Libyans flanking, rather than correctly attributing the victory to the cavalry probably stems from the fact that Polybius was himself citing the Carthaginian account, commissioned if not authored by Hannibal himself, which didn't want to admit that the dependable Libyans were placed on the flanks to preserve their lives and strength over the more unreliable allied and mercenary contingents of Gauls and Iberians which were placed in the thick of the fighting in the center and bore the majority of the losses. By the fiction of making their part crucial for the victory, rather than just the completeness of said victory, Hannibal could avoid the accusation of sacrificing his allies to preserve his own forces.
The more I see these animations of huge formations moving flawlessly on a battlefield, the more I'm convinced we don't actually have much of a clue how these battles were conducted.
@@boruta1034I mean, that's not really true. This is an underestimated factor in military history: marching cohesively at speed requires drums and drilled cadence. This is one of the reasons the Romans succeed to such a dehree; every other army marches much slower on the battlefield, because if it doesn't, it has to reform its ranks constantly.
@@boruta1034 Maybe on the parade ground, and even then people sometimes screw it up - they get out of step, turn in the wrong direction, don't halt when the rest of the formation stops, etc. Now add in noise, dust/rain/snow, heat/cold, irregular terrain, you or the men around you pissing or shi**ing themselves, unfriendly people trying to stick pointy metal objects into you - I think it then gets a lot more complicated.
One thing about orderly retreating, that isn't necessarily the case. The center of the crescent would be hit first, take casualties first and thus get pushed back first. So rather than an orderly retreat, it might just be being pushed back more because they are weakened more/earlier. The flanks would engage slightly later so wouldn't give up terrain as fast timewise and might get reinforced by the libyans from the flanks if necessary (who also don't need to push up, but rather use their unit size to hold ground and let the Romans push somewhat passed). The center also doesn't necessarily have to suddenly stop falling back as a choice for the envelopment tactic to work, rather a surge through the roman army from for example the flanks getting pushed in and the back getting attacked and pushed forward might reduce their effectiveness on the frontlines due to being more condensed and not having proper room to organise and spreading fear to the front lines. Moreover part of the skirmishers might have been kept in reserve to reinforce the center before it would break/when it should stop giving ground. I do not believe in the idea of an orderly fallback of the carthaginian center (considering the troops there and the scale, it would require too much discipline imo), but a predicted forced push back might have been an intended tactic/consequence of the initial troop arrangement. A gamble for sure, but isn't that Hannibal often does, take a gamble people wouldn't expect?
More of this format please! I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the homework portion and the analysis. This was an extremely insightful video. And ironically enough I am currently reading Goldsworthy’s Cannaw at the moment so the timing here couldn’t have been more perfect. Cheers!
Something that just came to my mind in terms of the crescent formation: Since you were talking about the whole attacking-psychology, I could imagine that the crescent formation led to the romans not marching straight but more drawn to the middle, since the carthaginian-guys that were closest were those standing diagonally to the roman line. So in my opinion it's seems possible that the lybians weren't as heavily engaged as in your simulation.
"The math simply ain't mathing" is one of my favorite phrases and I like to use it whenever possible ahaha. Something about that line is just so funny but gets the point across. Also, i think your computer is screaming in pain with that simulation lol EDIT: Is there any geological studies on the river to back up the idea the river might have moved in any significant manner? That crowd crush is scary. Really brings home how horrible a way to die.
This is what I appreciate about you! The effort you go to in your research as well as to help us laymen understand is wonderful. The diagrams begin to paint a picture but I didn't grasp the massive size of this event until you popped into the simulation at 48:00. The amount of coordination, communication and training of soldiers and officers alike just to produce and control an army like this is mind-boggling. It also shows just how much of a gamble Hannibal took deploying his army as he did. It looks like the Roman army should crush the Carthigian center and win the day yet we know that didn't happen. Thanks!
I think this is a strong possibility. These were well organised states but they still only covered very small areas which supported only a few thousand fighting men in mediaeval times.
What you miss and which is almost always forgotten is that the general for Rome ordered the soldiers to fight much closer to each other then they where trained to do. So your width is wrong it was much less. Trevor Nevitt Dupuy is one of them that writes about that.
Maybe the size of each army was exaggerated. I have always thought that ancient armies having tens of thousands of troops was just storytellers wanting to make a cool story.
I’m glad someone mentioned this! I have always thought that myself. What would the population of Rome have to be to be able to have that many men who could be farming die or get captured? What happened to the tens of thousands of widows and their children? Look at the size of napoleonic armies for example. The population of Europe was significantly larger but the armies are generally much smaller.
No, the sizes for the battle are well accounted for. Where you very much cannot trust the numbers however is with the Greeks and the Persians, because the Greeks exaggerated wildly. The Greeks claimed something like a 200,000 strong Persian army being defeated at Marathon for example, when it is quite likely that the 10,000 strong Greek force *outnumbered* the Persians.
@@randomhistory788 I have never personally seen an ancient Roman census so I can't testify to what one might've said. Even if there is one for that specific year that is irrefutably authentic, how can any of us know for a fact that it is correct? My point is that for ME personally archeological evidence seems to be the best evidence available. Now I am by no means an expert, but if there was a battle like Cannae where we think it happened; where are the tens of thousands of corpses? Broken weapons and the like? It's not like we can read the Cathiginians account either. That's LONG gone. The only sources of period information on this battle, to my knowledge, are quite a long time after the battle supposedly happened. The best source is 40 years after the fact. And the only other is 200 years after the fact. I would argue it is very possible the battle never happened at all. Unless we have indeed found the site of the battle, how could you possibly know for sure that it happened at all? It's not like we have thousands of letters to widows and such to examine. Without the written words of just a few human beings that can and do lie all the time, is there strong evidence that "Hannibal" even existed? I am by no means an expert, but I've never seen anything claiming to provide such. If I am unaware of something that you know, I would very much like to hear about it. Thank you for taking the time to respond and have a discussion!
@@MajinOthinus Thank you for sharing! But please see my comment to the other gentleman because I believe I touch on several things relevant to what you posted as well! The most important I will summarize here for you. 1) Why are you so confident on the numbers? 2) How can you be absolutely certain the battle happened at all without anyone ever finding and excavating the site? And finally, if you are able to provide answers to the above I would very much appreciate if you took the time to share. Learning new things is one of the great pleasures of life to me.
Very well done! My biggest gripe is your distance from skirmishers to the main force. Being able to see your main force 1 kilometer away is nice, sure, but it would not save them. In your own example you can see how quickly a sprinting horse can cover that ground, I am certain that the skirmishers would go no further than the time it would take them to run back to their lines to beat a horse coming from further and I am also confident that they would know how far that is.
Interesting arguments however nothing convincing of proof of any obvious "Lie" as suggested in the video title. Was fun to see a deeper dive of the battle overall.
As always, i applaud the effort and skill displayed to put all of this together. That said.... Feels like somewhere along the video Invicta got so immersed into the simulation ( Wich is an amazing show ) that the proper analysis was left as an aftertought. Nothing changes from the basic, agreed upon events.
One thing that a lot of sources probably won't mention is the frequency of which Soldiers would flee the lines only to gather their wits or be rounded up by their side's light cavalry and rejoin the line. This is frequently mentioned by many generals in history and still happens to soldiers to this day including in Ukraine and Russia. I hypothesize that the rear flanking cavalry would not necessarily form a solid "battleline" to "bottle" the rear but to mostly interdict fleeing men and interrupt C&C which would theoretically be in the rear. This could cause a panic among the general masses and condense and mix the various formation which would destroy cohesion. A deep and numerous formation such as the roman's would be more susceptible to this. Not to mention if you get so many people packed into one place, especially green unexperienced people, the panic caused could create a stampede in which many would be trampled, crushed while standing (such as in modern itaewon) or even be affected by heatstroke with all of the heat of the field and the body heat of others. The Numidian cavalry in the rear could cause this simply with it's presence. The Carthaginian lines may have bowed naturally due to them being pushed. But since their lines were thinner, the fleeing infantry could more easily reform in the line and keep fighting. This would not be possible with the thicker and harder to control Roman lines. It's also possible that without their cavalry the Romans simply could catch and reform fleeing romans. Scipio himself was one of these people that took flight. I agree that the double envelopment is highly exaggerated and it probably wasn't intentional, but the role of the cavalry still remains the decisive factor as it was also in the battle of Zama. In short, the current story gives hannibal more credit than he probably deserves but that is the story of every general is it not?
It really doesn't need to be so deep. The thing with a phalanx, especially one as green as this one, is that it relies entirely on the pressure generated by the rear lines to physically push the frontline through the enemy phalanx. A battle between to phalanxes is less a fight to kill the enemy, so much as a giant push to break through. Sort of like the opposite to a tug of war. But the moment that a credible threat to the rear appears, all that pressure just vanishes as the rear lines try to turn around and defend themselves. The whole formation just stops, confusion breaks out and the ones in the middle get crushed, as the rearmost lines fall back in trying to form a coherent frontline to protect themselves and the actual frontline gets shoved back or flees back because the physical pressure behind them is suddenly gone, yet the enemy is still pushing from the front. Once you're packed tightly enough, there is also no chance of restarting the push in any direction as your range of movement is now too constricted and any serious effort will just result in being crushed to death.
@ the theory that people were basically rugby players with weapons is often disputed more and more. Most experts now says it has no historical basis. But regardless it is not applicable after the rise of Swiss pikes. whereas me constantly retreating and returning to battle is recorded throughout history and is a fact. Not to mention friction and momentum on the line would apply to the front line and the front line only. There are many lines within this battle, the Romans did not fight in a phalanx so one line losing momentum wouldn’t mean much anyways because there are reserves.
I know you've got to see this all the time, bu great job. I love the channel. It's clear that you put your heart and soul into the content put out. Please keep up the great work.
Seeing the distances between lines with the crescent makes me wonder if the Roman lines began to shift towards the center to get to the closer troops. This would shorten their lines and make it easier for the Libyans to get on the Flanks. These were inexperienced troops. especially in the front. Once the Roman formations got too close, it would have been harder to redeploy to protect the flanks and would have made the Calvary charges much worse. I have seen videos modeling how crowds respond to crushes. It would be nice to see you work with a crowd specialist to see if these mechanics would help explain the battle. Also, another factor is the temperature. It was in the 90s F, from what I recall. That would have made the press of troops much worse as men died of heat stroke and exhaustion. These may have caused more causalities then the swords and spears. Thus maybe it was less about Hannibal's tactic and more about the lack of Discipline of the Roman troops. Perhaps, the writers would rather elevate Hannibal then call out their own ineptitude.
Great video. One formation I have used in Tabletop Wargames (with occasional success) is a slightly deeper centre which is hard to spot from the enemy line where they don't have heights to look from. In that first modelled line with the crescent bowing back, if you have reserves behind that centre then that middle section can bend back and not break as they are reinforced. The reserves don't have to be enormous, just enough to hold the push and prevent a breakthrough. In that case you do end up with an enemy bulge as they attempt to exploit the pressure but simply have a massed centre with irrelevant superiority of forces than cannot engage anyone and simply are outmanoeuvred as the flanks become their rear. I appreciate that reserves are not mentioned but most competent commanders liked to have some uncommitted troops to play with and respond to the unexpected.
LOVED this video and i want more! Look at the size of this battle! I really wanr more of this vídeos showing the real size of battles, it would be cool with a napoleonic battle as well
Lol. It'd have to be the 'lay' of Cannae then. I don't know why Americans pronounce it "can eye" rather than 'ka·nay' (google 'Cannae pronunciation' and Google will provide a pronunciation, which is an awesome feature of Google IMHO. I wish more people would use it)
Thank you for a truly fascinating and thought provoking analysis! Truly well done! I also appreciate how you gave appropriate credit to the gentleman whose argument served as the foundation for your wonderful work.
Are there no archaeological finds that help pinpoint the location of the battle? Not one dig? It is weird that it hasn't come up in the video. You'd think there would be a trove of archaeological information there to establish this.
@@AnExtrovertPaints weird thing about ancient battles is that ancient armies were very, very good at cleaning up the mess. Every sword, spear, piece of armor, everything that could be reused or melted down and remade was collected. Not to mention the bodies were quickly taken care of as well. So even if we had a good idea of where to dig, it would be unbelievably lucky to find anything at all.
Apart from the Incredible resourcefulness from ancient armies to not waste a single scrap of useful material, the river is not in the place where it used to be, so reconstruction of the battle has to take into account the lack or archeological remains, the river changing place, the inconclusive size of the battlefield, all that having to match just a handful of written sources that may or may not have biased information about the debacle. So it's pretty much guess work.
This is an excellent analysis, and raises some points I'd never thought about. I'll be doing a video on Cannae myself in a few months, and I'm definitely going to incorporate some of your ideas (with attribution, of course) when I do. Thanks for this!
Really like the spirit of the video and the study of the details of history. But I also think it’s hilarious that the opening argument was: “it doesn’t work in my video game so it probably didn’t happen” 😂
I mean, UE5 is just the medium through which the data is represented. You could have just as accurately depicted this on paper with little tiny circles to scale with the real data. It would have been harder and there would have been no visualisation of what this sort of situation could look like down on the ground but there is nothing really stopping you from drawing it out and coming to similar conclusions if you really wanted to, for the prestige of the physical medium.
@@HistoryRebels the title is clickbait. He just suggests that the bulge was lighter, that the flanks were of less and the cavalry of more importance to the envelopment. No debunking done.
Hope you enjoy but please do skip ahead to our conclusion before walking away with the idea that this is some massive rewriting of Cannae at a fundamental level. Much of the arguments are about mechanics of how the same conclusion was actually reached. So different path but same ending.
@@LetLin-ps4xn I disagree. The common pop history depiction suggests the infantry flanks and the bulge were crucial for the encirclement But Invicta suggests that is really not the case. I'm not entirely convinced about the infantry flank exposure not being relevant, but it would have taken ages for the effects to propagate throughout the front line; at least in time before the Punic center buckled. In Invicat's proposal, the battle was won with a far more conventional 'cavalry battle is won and completes the hammer and anvil' which is a lot less "special" than the 'inverted cresent bottling the Romans up' that is usually told.
In just the first couple of minutes their are so many huge presumptions and claims that it undermines the entire video, deeply disappointed they would steep this low. 1. The info on cannae varies over the sources and no serious academic claim them to be exact for obvious reasons. So disproving their own incorrect summary is just lying through manipulation. 2. Its a well established academic fact that the number of soldiers involved are extremely rough, their might have half as many or twice as many. (More commonly far fewer in alot of battles). Taking that in to account the so called calculations are to a large part worthless. You cant rum detailed calculations on numbers with such huge margins. 3. We lack full details on the terrain. Its been like two millenia and we only know roughly where it happened. Shifting the battlefield even a few kilometers makes a huge difference. I can go on but truly pretending their are exact enough numbers to calculate it like this is just not true. There are alot of other huge issues with this but mainly its just disappointing to see such shody work being passed on as serious research while indirectly making earlier research look bad by presenting their work like this...
To my knowledge most historians agree that the Romans likely had 76000 troops in battle and the Carthaginians 50000. What is your evidence that an "established fact" that the number of soldiers involved at Cannae was "extremely rough" to such an extreme that they could have twice as many (probably logistically immpossible) or half as many soldiers?
One of the things that astounds me with Cannae are the sheer numbers of casualties. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme the British & French lost about 21,000 dead to mechanised warfare. At Cannae the Romand lost more than twice this - to hand-to-hand fighting!
What are you saying? That a drawing made on an english book about something that happened thousands of year ago might not be accurate even when the sources are two authors that weren't there and wrote in a whole different language.... the only big lie is the tittle. I don't get it, your content ain't bad but why use a click bait here, if you think that the topic is kind of shallow go on and ditch it
Kind of The defeat was essentially because, they had too many guys, so they couldn't organise properly They knew the army was way too big to do anything complicated, so the only thing they could do, was just go forwards A smaller army could have responded to things better, but trying to get groups to move, could cause a lot of confusion when the army is as big as it was at Cannae. So the extent of their manouever was 'march forwards and kill anyone that isn't a roman' Which would normally have worked (and very nearly did) just through sheer numbers) Along with a lack in Cavalry, despite trying everything they could to reinforce the cavalry, they were routed off, and gave Hannibal's cavalry the field to hammer and anvil and destroy morale. The Roman idea for Cannae was 'this guy keeps winning, fuck it, throw EVERYTHING at him, we'll crush him with sheer numbers, no way he can pull anything fancy against this many guys' He then proceeded to pull something fancy against that many guys
Most of the guys basically did nothing and were spooked when they started seeing pockets of carthaginians attacking them from different angles. I think alot of Romans survived the fight since a clean envelopment was unlikely which is why rome didn't surrender. They still had quite a few men to throw hands.
@@giftzwerg7345 hiding his troops in an open field Using the dust kicked up by the army to deploy the Lybians on the flanks without them being noticed so they could do the flanking. As well as generally being able to keep the army together for long enough that the cavalry could win, rest, and circle back in to slam in the rear
@@giftzwerg7345pulling off the largest scale hammer and anvil ever is, unto itself, super fancy. The adage that quantity is a quality all it’s own applies in both directions here. Hammer and anvil is a straight forward concept, but when you play it out at the scale of this battle, it becomes incredibly intricate.
This is some incredible work! For one, seeing the detailed academic work that goes into forming these ideas and conclusions 'in real time' is fascinating and enrapturing and gives such a deeper understanding of the events and our understanding of them. And as for the specifics of Cannae, I could see, (and really hope), that this piece could be the start of a whole new wave of discussion and understanding of the events among academics in the subject, of which you are clearly a part of. I cannot wait to hear more about how this discussion develops, and would absolutely love to see similar pieces on other historical events. Obviously they wouldn't all be able to fundamentally shift the widely held perception of the events as this has, but even if they are more just about developing understanding and context, I think it would be just as important.
I love such videos. It gives a true (IMHO) understanding of how some important historical events happened. It provides important details and scale. Still impressed by your video of Bronze Age Collapse. Must watch more of the channel.
Given that battles take hours upon hours, a 10min walk (or if a faster response is needed a 5-6min jog) from the Libyan flanks to respond to a hypothetical breakthrough doesn‘t seem unreasonable? Although, it feels like if there would have been a breakthrough that would have absolutely been mentioned by the historians to highlight Roman bravery and strength even if they ultimately lost, no?
The sources are Romans, probably non-combattants. I'd expect them to be at the rear of the Roman army, and thus not able to see firsthand if there was a breakthrough or not. But they could've seen that the soldiers at the center were moving fast (indicating a pursuit? Unclear if the enemy's center is simply giving ground or outright breaking) and that this momentum stopped when troops from the wings (Lybians) intervened somehow (again, they don't seem to know what they did exactly here). But I do agree that a 5-10min walk in these circumstances is not that unreasonable, easpecially since they don't need to make it to the center, only to the flanks of the mass of Romans who are punching through (we see a diagram from a scholar showing a third of the punic line broken off, cutting the distance for the Lybians to travel in order to "charge the flank".
This is actually a great lesson in something else for all us history buffs. Which is that the little intricacies and nuances of commanding and maneuvering an army is way way more complicated. I certainly feel like I underestimated just how complex that it could be.
The very idea of trying to model a battle in AutoCAD or something similar is absolutely insane but also kind of brilliant...Gary is a true legend. Thank you and thanks to everyone else who said "hey you know we have the tools now to actually test these things" and took the time to actually do it.
quite few problems I can see with your work: 1) you start making big assumptions, then draw conclusions based on those assumptions, then, as those conclusions do not match the historical accounts, you take that as to mean the accounts are wrong, while quite obviously what it really mean is that it is your initial assumptions which are wrong. Sorry. :) This is a flawed methodology that unfortunately affects all this work despite the fact that it does have some interesting point. 2) some of yours basic facts are just outright wrong, too long to discuss every single point here, but just one as an example, your distances for the opposite forces are pure fantasy. Ancient armies would deploy basically just out of enemy skirmishers range. That is one of the main points of having skirmishers of your own in the first place, to protect your main line from enemy skirmishers that would otherwise harass your main troops, preventing them from maneuvering and inflicting demoralizing casualties on them while staying out of their reach. So skirmishers would form up just a little out of range from enemy skirmishers, say 50 meters top, and the main line not much further back, thus your initial distance between the opposing lines is about ten times off. Skirmishers are a troop type you dismiss several time as of little significance early on, while in reality they were extremely important especially in the opening phases of the battle. For example because they will be able to see which enemy unit they have in front without becoming locked in close combat, so they can report it and eventually screen the main line allowing it to redeploy to best match the enemy formation... (but that is another story.) You later assume that they were used for all sort of other things except for skirmishing, and that therefore they were very important after all, but not because they were good at skirmishing, which is again just another example of 1 above, sorry. :) 3) Another issue you completely seem to ignore is that ancient generals did not have the ability to survey the situation the same way as you do with your 21st century computer models. You are zooming around and making all sort of clever speculations on a global vision of the field that nobody ever had. The reality is that those general on the field had very little to absolutely zero idea of what was going on, something that is easy to appreciate when you look at your own simulation in first person view (which BTW ignore the dust that once the battle started would have reduced visibility to a couple of dozen meters at best as related in the sources). Even after the battle they could only guess what actually happened exactly, trying to patch together the narrations of the survivors, each reporting a fragmented view of a 20-30 meters area out of a 3 km wide picture, as in a gigantic puzzle. At the very least however these generals would have had some reports from the front line. Their troops on the other hand, especially the front lines engaged in combat, had zero idea of what was going on more than a couple of hundred meters away at best, so they could not know, understand or react to what is happening in other parts of the field. That I think is the real reason behind the bulge formation and it really highlight the tactical genius of Hannibal and his deep understanding of the battle mechanics: what will happen is that the first Roman unit will make contact in the center of the line because that is where the Carthaginians are positioned most forward. The Roman troops at each side of this unit at this point will have no opponents immediately to their front, so will naturally start to shift toward the engagement, starting a flow that tend to contract the overall front. The first Carthaginian troops contacted will soon be beaten back, and basically will run back between the units just a little back at their side, which are still fresh. These in turn will now temporarily halt the Romans to their front, those at the side of the first unit that made contact, while these will continue to pursue the broken enemy at their front. This will cause them to become overflanked and surrounded by enemies, which at the very least will slow down their momentum. Meantime the Roman troops at the side of those that are now engaged, at this point will still have no opponents immediately to their front, so again they will shift toward the engagement at the center, further contracting the overall front. Back in the rear, with no idea of what is actually going on, what will be obvious however is that some friendly troops are moving forward while others are not, so again there will be a tendency to move toward and behind those that are advancing. This dynamic will continue to repeat itself drawing more and more of the Romans units further toward the center as they advance, and will eventually turn their whole battle lines into a gigantic disordered wedge with a monstrous traffic jam in the center. THAT mess is what becomes now possible for the Carthaginians to encircle and compress, something that would never be possible for them to do to well ordered Roman legionary battle array . The very shape into which Hannibal has deployed his troops has already determined beforehand the way the troops will eventually move and how the battle will inescapably proceed: once it started there is nothing anyone can do about it, it was simply impossible to control that many troops in the field. You kind of get to that point yourself around 1.07, but then once you realize that, you can see that the actual depth of the crescent is pretty much irrelevant, and in any case there is nobody ever fighting a retreat for kilometers, but just one unit at a time falling back behind the one immediately to the side and further back, one after the other. Not impossible at all. 4) Once the Roman center is running forward and the rest of their army has basically started collapsing on itself toward the center, from the point of view of the Libyans not yet engaged on the wings it will appear as if the Romans are now mostly moving sideways away from them. Quite apart of a potential morale boost that this may give them, it would now be possible for these well ordered, fresh units of experienced veterans to turn to face what has become the side of the Roman formation which is now slowly assuming the shape of a giant triangular wedge, again nothing impossible here. So facing these still well ordered shieldwalls of spearmen there would now be the flank of the roman units, and as the Libyans start marching forward (that is toward the center of the battle, having turned first) the Romans centuriae engaged to what is now their side will naturally try to turn and face this new enemy and in doing so will further compress and disorder the center of the whole formation behind them. That the depth of the Libyan formations on the side is not enough to "flank" the entire Roman formation is irrelevant, because it is the Roman formation that is basically flowing in front of them (or rather at their side) as it moves forward and to the center; all the Libyan spearmen have to do is just to keep pushing them and squeeze their ranks, turning a unit at the time as the Romans pass by. Eventually the entire Roman formation will be flanked by them. From the point of view of the Romans is will seem that the Libyans are attacking them on the flanks, which is exactly what Polybius tell us it happened. continue below...
5) At this point the only part of the Roman army that could possibly still have maintained some order and could still maneuver would be the most rear ranks. Unfortunately for them it is on the rear of these very units that the Carthaginian cavalry, after having forced their opponents to flee, now falls on. Even assuming all these maniples did not panic from the sudden appearance of the enemy at their back (having no idea of what is happening anywhere else, it certainly was quite unsettling!) even assuming they all maintained perfect cohesion and ordered ranks and followed they centurions orders in the most resolute and professional way, what could they do, but turn and face the enemy? And now you have it, as the cavalry closed the lid on what has become a basically complete encirclement, except probably for some of the foremost center that, first to fight, by now may well have broken through the Carthaginian lines, and in doing so would now find themselves isolated in enemy territory, sandwiched between the enemy army and the enemy camp, exhausted and disordered, and cut out from their own lines. Hardly in position to affect the outcome of the immense slaughter that has begun on the other side of the enemy line they just crossed... not that they could possibly knew of it at this point, mind you! 6) so yes, I think a breakthrough in the center did most likely happened, and I think what the Carthaginians did about it is pretty much nothing, for the very simple fact that there wasn't much they could do about it, again even assuming that they "knew" about it, in the sense of an officers of adequate rank having an adequate force at his command being informed in time of it. I think it is safe to assume that visibility from the camp was not good enough to understand and react to this immediately but most likely news of the Roman breakthrough would eventually arrive and possibly some of the camp garrison may have been dispatched to deal with them. If the battered Romans did not flee I think it's reasonable to assume that at the very least they would have tried to make back to their camp at this point, and that is probably how those approximately 14 thousand Romans managed to escape and survive the slaughter. It is certainly what had happened at the battle of Trasimene a year earlier, which BTW IMHO is where and when Hannibal saw this kind of mechanic playing out and where he took the inspiration for Cannae. He may have seen it happen at a much smaller scale, as he watched from his dominating position on the hills while his forces fell down on the Roman line stretched along the lake shore. He may have noticed as the individual maniples maintained cohesion but naturally tended to move following the flow of the battle, inexorably attracted toward the points where their comrades succeeded in pushing back the enemy. Faced with overwhelming odds an year later, he may have thought to try and use that to turn the enemy numbers against themselves, and drive them into a cascading overlap that would eventually create an inescapable whirlpool of chaos and confusion. He may, but now let's be clear: this is just me making things up, this is pure speculation, unsupported by any fact. He may as well have drawn the line in a crescent shape in honor to Tanit and hoped for the best... :) 7) last, but really, no serious historian takes any of Livy accounts in much considerations, he is writing with a clear agenda, has been proven to bend facts to conform to this agenda in countless occasions, had no understanding whatsoever of the reality of warfare and all his "facts" are just hand picked as needed from earlier sources and adjusted to fit his narrative. His figures can pretty mush be disregarded all together as well as his general narration. After all that, I have to say I think you are sincere in your endeavor and while I disagree with both your premises and your conclusions, and I do find your methods rather amateurish (not offense intended, I'm certainly no scholar and I do consider myself an amateur at best, but I know enough of historical research methods to see that this is not professional work, and I do think it should be presented as such) I find however very interesting your ideas. In particular I have always been much fascinated by the true scale of ancient battles myself, so while I don't think there are "historical misconceptions" to correct here (at least as far as the actual historical views of the battle are concerned) you certainly raise extremely valid points in regard to representing, modeling and also wargaming ancients battle, something which I would consider not a little praise! So for that and for an inspiring and original video I would like to thank you! :)
The Roman’s wrote about their own loss? I forgot if anyone found Hannibal and got his version of it. Chances are, though, the Romans screwed up royally, in many ways, and this was the best way to explain it.
Practically no Carthaginian writings survive at all - or at least none have been catalogued and translated, if any happen to exist either in bulk archaeological collections or still out in the field. The only partial works that survive through intermediate (Greek and Roman) translations are a short work on agriculture, the account of Hanno the Navigator's voyage around Africa, and some religious / tombstone inscriptions from the Carthage Tophet
Revisiting battles like Cannae in True Size has always been one of my dreams and I'm very excited about potentially using UE5 to correct historical misconceptions. You can support our continued efforts by checking out some of our maps and merch on the store: invicta-history-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/all
Look at orbital satellite data ground penetrating sensors into the ground to illuminate the ancient river channel back then. Like they do in S America jungles to find ancient settlements.
@@InvictaHistory true size of gondors arms ?
The problem is Is that you didn't mention The rout or The dust so even if there was not rout The cammanders would not be able to see the incoming libens
Your theory on the wedge disrupting the roman charge/pilla use doesnt make sense given the romans would have experience of disjointed engagements due to their checkerboard deployments
So Cannae didn't happen?
Dude opened up a Cannae of worms
But then Hannibal opened up a can of whoop a^^.
lol
My sides are in hyperborea
Lol
And he has the gaul to casually spark such controversy on his youtube channel no less!
babe wake up, new Cannae conspiracy just dropped.
Cannaespiracy.
@@flazzorb Cannspiracy
Yeah right, we know you got no one sleeping next to you that is a human, especially a human female!
@@r-saintHis was better.
@@flazzorb I knew this would be here
Part of your model that i believe is overlooked is the idea that every roman will nicely line up and correspond to every Carthaginian, if you think of mob /crowd dynamics I think there will be a bias for the romans to target the tip of the formation or on the portion of the diagonal that is closer to them, which will bunch them into the center, so even if the lines both start at the same length as eachother natural bias toward the closest enemy will cause them to bunch up. which could easily be a half kilometer of shrinkage over such a big difference because if each guy only biases half a meter toward the center when your the 5,000th man thats alot of length lost.
This also then explains how inverting the formation sucks in the romans even more and open opportunity for flanking.
Also first person view would be better than first person for scale, for obvious reasons, being able too see the whole battlefield is much easier in third person
@@onri_ yeah i think that could be a big contributing factor, that would also mean the flanks are naturally more exposed to the libyans
Centurions would keep the men marching in a straight line, this is not a mob of protestors these are trained, disciplined soldiers who know how to march in formation, even if they lack experience.
so think more about the romans fight off bodica's army/mob of fighter? how this roman army behaved
@@ramonruijgt4532 you have to keep in mind that these are tons of soldiers of varying quality and due to the enormous size hard to centrally control and manage. The only thing in common is they all wanted to remove the Punic general from their land and were extremely over confident due to their army soze
When the Carthaginian center fell back, this caused the Romans to be pulled to the middle like a funnel. The Romans kept moving forward, thinking they had broken through but they were really just filling space, eventually compacting themselves together; losing cohesion and greatly shortening their line. I think you overlooked this crowd dynamic that explains how the Libyans were able to hit the flanks. The Romans were already being pressed together BEFORE they got hit in the rear by cavalry.
yea there were first hand accounts of soldiers not being able to lift there arms they were pressed so tightly together.
Ok, so the vast number of men in the center of the Roman mass cannot raise them arms. The vast number of men in the center of a cohesive formation don’t fight anyway. The men at the periphery are the ones thrusting spear and sword towards the enemy. For one to believe the myth of Cannea , you have to believe that the Roman soldiers who are actually in contact with the Carthaginians- just give up and do not even fight back.
@@finallychangedit4926
The "first hand accounts " do belong to writers about 150 years later though ...
In a period in which the drama of "we were so hardly beaten but still victorious" was as powerful as weed today, so to speak.
While all the others exaggerated the numbers of their enemies, Romans did almost the opposite (almost)
Rome always depicted themselves into a weird epic underdog: "we were many but stupid but we learned and won !"...
When I look at all their losses in the 1st and 2nd Punic wars and add the numbers, it is a wonder Rome was still populated after that ...
@@krixpop in the same way that a lot of ww1 media shows off the front line to be muddied and waterlogged as they were in 3rd Ypres, with the fortifications similar to those found in Verdun, with the mass scale assaults and death of the somme.
People grab at whatever the most extreme for is and even just outright lie to make it more horrific to make its overcoming seem even more insane.
@@krixpopRight? When I found out how many people died just trying to sail to Africa it blew me away. That’s just a straight up 100% loss of men, money, materials, and time without the enemy expending any of those things themselves.
You seem to disregard the phrase used repeatedly: "pulled into the centre". You don't even touch what that would mean. It would mean that the Roman flanks would keep moving in towards the centre. Not straight ahead but diagonally. THAT creates the flanks you are missing. Remember that they are noobs and would rather attach the ones their pals are already fighting rather than the angry dudes that are staring at them straight ahead.
And all of a sudden the entire problem disappeared almost as if the historians simply told it true from the get go.
I also stumbled over this. It was suspiciously un-highlighted, when it seems to be very clearly relevant.
@@Zathaghil not only that, but it’s got a lot of variables, depending on where the armies where, how they deployed, how the officers performed. It all comes to a crescendo where you get cannae.
I also point out. If you have difficulties with a massive battle line. You might opt to double up your lines to half the distance and make communication easier.
You cant expect 10 minutes between orders being issued and received in a battle where 5 minutes can make a difference.
Additionally, the wedge formation of Hannibal's center would pull the Romans towards the center and cause them to bunch up. A soldier's instinct in battle would be to engage the nearest enemy, which causes both sides of the line to converge towards the bulge in the center. This is exacerbated by the green Roman troops.
I hear you guys, but how do you suppose the Carthegenian line must have held?
@@Zathaghil exactly!!!!!!! Absolutely correct. Couldnt have Said it better. I can visualize it perfectly.
Another thing that was probably AGAIN overlooked...
The second battle on the other side of the river that Takes place simultaneously, when the romans try to storm the carthaginian camp!
It is mentioned iirc!
That's very important because at the late part of the battle (when the romans are almost or mostly defeated) Hannibal rushes to help and drive the romans back.
I cannot emphazise it enough how crucial the timing is in this battle.
And the timing again was wrong with the cavalry Engagements. The gallic and carthaginian cavalry in the left/ roman right, were still fighting the last remnants of the roman equites.
At about 2/3 or 3/4 of this cav Engagement, the infantry frontlines met.
Timing.
Timing!!!
There is a fair point here. Particularly about how the cavalry really won the battle. But I have four points of constructive criticism: 1) I think you all are leaning in a bit hard on the "it's so massive" and "you can't see what's going on". Military historians and strategists have long dealt with the concept of large armies and non-instantaneous communication lines. To say their diagrams are fundamentally flawed grants them little credit to understand how large armies work. They would have had extensive experience with large armies in formation; let's just sit on the Napoleonic Wars for a second or two. 2) You all didn't model the solider rank depth extreme enough. Sure you've tripled the standard/expected depth for both the Romans and flanking Iberians, and that is reasonable. But perhaps it's too cautious? What if the rank was 10 times deeper? 20 times? That would really stand out to historians Livy and Polybius, indicating that the order of battle wasn't something they'd ever come across and worth spending a few words on. They might not have been explicit on how many lines on how deep the rank was because they were political historians, not military. As far as we know, they had no personal military experience to know what would have been reasonable. They simply knew Varro played this very differently. 3) I think you've been far too dismissive about the positioning of the river. Rivers can change considerably in only a few dozen years, let alone two thousand. I'd argue hard that the river was at the edge of the flood plain at the time. Varro knew he was deficient on the flanks in terms of cavalry; he probably assumed he'd lose those battles. But if the rank was long enough on the flanks, it might buy him enough time to break Hannibal's center and destroy his lines of communication. In that scenario, it makes sense that Varro would want to be in a very narrow 3 km passage (with an extremely deep ranked set of lines) between the city/ridge and river in order to minimize the movement of the cavalry. 4) The Romans most certainly broke the center. I don't think there is any way it could have been a fighting withdrawal. At least in the extreme middle. They kept pushing and got out of formation. Was it a defeat in detail? Unlikely; the Carthaginian center was too thin to simply turn and push back on the Romans. We know the Romans were green troops; we should assume the officers were green too. If they broke the center, started chasing and couldn't reform because their lines of command communication were too far away in the back getting killed by cavalry...you'd probably just stand there and try to figure out how to get back to camp without much luck.
I would say at least with the 1st point to keep in mind the Romans wouldnt have made their formation shorter than the Carthegian one if they could. So the possible length of the Roman army kinda determines the length of the Carthegian one and vice versa. And there's a reason why depth has diminishing returns, a small number can hold back a much larger group thats way deeper than them.
So imo given the likely depths of BOTH sides, whats presented sounds realistic in a way thats long enough to anchor both sides flanks while not leaving the Romans too narrow or th3 Carthegians too thin/thick
He labels the diagrams as fundamentally flawed because they are. To be readable on the page, the battle lines have to be depicted as far deeper than they ever were. This makes tactics or manoeuvres appear plausible when an accurate, adequately scaled diagram would immediately reveal their unlikelihood.
It is also extremely unlikely that the Romans would deliberately expose their flanks to Cannae and Hannibal would not take advantage of that in some way - and the sources do not mention that at all.
The river def was on a different spot. Good point
Very good post, next step is to learn how to not make text walls
Im not sure if this adds to your point but history marche has a really good video on cannae for my opinion, - ruclips.net/video/xjnck2XvuPQ/видео.html here is the video in question,
Dude started as a gameplay channel now is debunking a whole pivotal moment in history causing upheaval between historians. West Point will be giving you a call soon 😅
Thanks for the shoutout but I do want to note a few things:
1) Gary Brueggemen was actually the one who started digging in on this topic first with to-scale models and pointed out a lot of the issues which I am now following up on with a more detailed model in Unreal Engine.
2) The whole of Cannae is far from debunked but I think we've helped point out some glaring flaws with most depictions and identified new problems that warrant further investigation.
3) I would very much like to work with academics to further refine this model and provide commentary on the questions it raises. To this end I've actually gotten in contact with Adrian Goldsworthy to see what he might have to say.
@@InvictaHistory wow an interview with Adrian Goldsworthy about this would be unbelievable!
Good to see your face.
AI feel normally from my few views.
@@eduardokiryu5456 too funny 😂
@@InvictaHistoryKeep up the great work. Also, wow! Adrian Godsworthy?! His book on Augustus is my favorite Roman Biography ever! I hope he reaches back.
Interesting as always, and love the work you've put into the video, well done! But, I would argue that titling the video as "The Big Lie" and then going ahead to say, "what we've been told about Cannae has been riddled with lies," but then presenting a version of Cannae which is based on a lot of assumptions as well, is misleading.
As others have mentioned in the comments, a lot might be gained from archaeological evidence, and if not, new assumptions should not be made, especially about things we (as armchair generals) think may have been unlikely: Why could the two armies not have faced off in the narrow gap between the river and Cannae? Why wouldn't the Libyans have been in a deeper formation? Where was the river really?
Don't get me wrong, if this was what really happened at Cannae, I'd be eager to accept it, because even if the story of Cannae isn't as cool as the one we're used to, the truth is what really matters. In this case however, you don't seem to give us a more truthful account of what happened, simply a new story, which seems to be more consistent with some assumptions you've made.
If this is indeed how Cannae happened, I'd accept it, but I would need more hard evidence than what you've given, especially while purporting that you're "rewriting the history of Cannae". Based on the sources and what we've seen so far from other sources, I see no problem with the way they present it. Even History Channel's version, while not complete, isn't erroneous. When a history buff watches that, they understand that of course a million things are being simplified and compressed into a 10-minute video. But the basic idea is still the same: the Romans were too deep, and were drawn into a wedge, and were then enveloped.
When you title a video as being one which exposes the lies previously told, I as a viewer assume that what I've heard before was completely wrong, and you have new evidence to correct that view. In this video however, you basically gave us the same version we've seen before, and the things you did change, were based on assumptions you'd made, many of which seem unsubstantiated to me.
I don't mean to be a sourpuss here, pissing on your battery: I understand you must have put a huge amount of energy and time into this video, and it shows: it's fantastic! I would just say, rather than titling a video as strongly as "The Big Lie" just to get clicks, maybe be more aware of the fact that what you're doing here might not be exposing some "maniacal lie" purported by "incompetent RUclipsrs", but rather, as with any good historian or scientist, you're giving a more in depth and more accurate view of what may have likely happened.
The big lie title is a bit clickbaity. It did get me to watch the video though, so I'd say they were successful there. I'd also argue that they're not entirely wrong in calling it a big lie. Nobody has really mapped out how much space the armies would take up on the battlefield. Up until now the picture painted by historians was frankly outlandish and didn't really fit with how we know ancient armies organized themselves. Even the "period" sources were stretched to the absolute limit by the most popular tellings of Cannae, and those sources themselves were written decades after the battle by piecing together secondhand information.
The Romans getting disorganized in their advance, walloped in the cavalry engagement, and then ran down from behind by enemy cavalry sounds fairly realistic to me. It doesn't require the Romans to use outlandish tactics or be wildly incompetent.
After watching the whole video, I don't see a big lie. All that changed was the location of the battle and making the lines more stretched out. The "simulation" was a joke. It was just digital renderings of a scene. I'd much rather see the scenario wargamed out in Total War. You could do a 1:10 scale by increasing HP by 10 and reducing movement speed to 1/10.
@ctrlaltdebug the scale is really important for how the battle played out. A more compact battlefield allows much more maneuvering by Carthaginian infantry in both the center and flanks.
@@waysidetimes9226 That's exactly the problem with clickbait though, isn't it: one is enticed to click on a video because of a catchy title or a cool thumbnail, but is then disappointed with the video itself. I'm not saying this video is true clickbait, as the video is not trash, but the fact that the title gave me a very different idea of what I got from the video in the end, is disappointing from a channel which espouses to be truthful.
And again, I agree with your view that the tight formations seen in other representations aren't exactly consistent with what we usually see from armies of the period, but again, that is not a basis for evidence, merely for doubt of the old version. To many people today it is inconceivable that the Earth is round, and so they doubt evidence that's been around for millennia. Doubt is always good, as it leads us to new discoveries, but merely doubting the old theory (which has worked so far), isn't enough to disprove it, and definitely not enough to prove the new theory. If one presents a new theory which seems to work better in terms of what one would expect, it must also be backed by evidence. Here, it seems the strongest evidence is the very fact that the author doubts the realism of the old representation of what happened at Cannae. That's not enough.
You say the old version is "outlandish". I would argue it's merely strange, not inconceivable. And just because a battle seems to have gone differently from how we would have expected, based on how things usually went at the time, is not evidence that it didn't happen. There are many examples of commanders making seemingly stupid mistakes, but which may have been prudent at the time, based on the extreme circumstances they found themselves in. Sometimes luck was on their side and we hail them as genius victors, other times their gambit failed and history names them idiots.
To me, the older version we've been told is not outlandish. I'm not an expert in military tactics, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but since we're discussing this, let's discuss: the Romans had been beaten time and again by Hannibal, badly. But, they knew that they're heavy infantry had broken (or almost broken) his centre before. The only reason he had won every battle so far, was the fact that he had been able to outmanoeuvre them in various ways. I can imagine this whole situation pushed the senate and the Romans to the brink of madness. Something had to be done! For Roman commanders on the field, it's easy to imagine them being under a lot of pressure to prove themselves against Hannibal, but also to not lose another army to the man in a risky attempt. We know that they didn't give battle when Hannibal presented such opportunity on the other side of the river. However, in the tiny space between the city (and its hills), and the river, they must have seen that Hannibal would have little room to manoeuvre. In my mind, facing Hannibal here, and not anywhere else, would have been a brilliant move by the Romans. He can't outflank us, he can't put his cavalry to good use. Sure, we can't make use of our numbers as we would like to, but we've already seen that numbers don't really matter against Hannibal. Steamrolling his weak central infantry quickly, and then use superior numbers to either get rid of his cavalry or to scare them away, seems a prudent choice to me. It is very different from tactics used during that era, but what other options are left, when facing "the devil himself"?!?
But he ASSUMES the armies don't have space because he ASSUMES where the battle SHOULD be, disregarding even how much the river changed over time@@waysidetimes9226
Nothing new was presented here. The cavalry battles on the flanks and the subsequent cavalry attacks on the Roman rear have always been noted as the critical parts of this battle. Hannibal used a crescent formation to blunt/slow the Roman infantry, sacrificing his allied infantry to buy time for his overwhelming cavalry strength to finish the battle. There was no need for a "controlled withdrawal", because Hannibal knew Roman weight of numbers in the middle would naturally produce the withdrawal. Hannibal probably gave these orders to his infantry, "No matter what happens, don't break and run, or we're all dead." Hannibal gambled on cavalry success and timing, because that's all he could do against such odds. I would suggest the cavalry battles were concluded in a much shorter period of time than any historian has noted. I would also speculate that the cavalry attack on the rear disrupted Roman command and control, eliminating the messenger rider, signal banner, and signal horn systems. At some point, the Roman infantry had no idea of the disaster unfolding, until the troops in the back began piling into the ones in front.
However, I think this video did an excellent job of showing the numbers involved, the scale of the battle, and the topography. Thank you for the time spent producing this content.
Yeah, as I was told ages ago by my old Latin teacher, the front Roman troops had no clue what was going on in the back. Communication was made difficult by the immense density of the roman lines, the chaos of the battle, the double leadership role of the roman generals and yeah the succesfull cavalry attack by the Cartaghinians probably worsened that even more, as a result nobody knew what do anymore on the Roman side, so they did the only thing they could, try to move forward in the breach. If you contrast that with Hannibals approach: disctinct units with clear roles: center-flank-cavalry, and laying down a rough plan for his generals before the battle started.
For our American viewers the battles lines were roughly 565,634 gumballs long.
For our EU viewers the battles lines were roughly 21,980 FEET. God bless the Imperial measurement system.
How many hamburgers is that?
@@margieargie Roughly 6,034 hamburgers for the refined American depending on whether you up size them or not.
You mean approximately 3200 M16A4's long?
@@Legiondude Molon labe
As an archaeologist I got one question concerning the position of the battle 🤔. I don't know, what has been done on that behalf in the area of Cannae, but in Germany we also often work with concentrations of findings, mapping them and such. Typical, there are large concentrations of findings, where a battle took place, even with looting and so on afterwards. You seem to only work with the literatur, which can be misleading, and confirmation by the terrain. I suggest, trying to solidify your thesis by archaeological findings, which are much more facts than written sources. But as I said, don't know, if thats avaiable.
Also Rivers can move quite a bit, as you mentioned. Often in geology or also archaeology there are maps of river movement based on excavations or probes from drilling and such. Don't know if there is for this specific area, but might as well be something to look into.
I like your approach so far and you questioning established theories, that's how science works 😊
PS: If you want to publish pictures from your simulation in close ups, make sure to use a player model true to that era, your's wearing a niederbieber helmet or similiar and lorica segmentata, which does not fit the time. But I assume, that was just to show us insights here in the workflow video :D
Yeah, the changes can be massive... I don't think there is a single known in detail big Medieval battle from my country's history where the battlefield is even remotely close to what it was. All the rivers have been regulated, straightened, dams everywhere, swamps dried up, forests cut down, medieval forts swallowed by cities... nothing can really be recreated.
Archaeology is indeed super helpful for history, but please, explain how can it be helpful to reconstruct tactics of a battle? The position of the river aside (that is more geology than archaeology ˆˆ), how can archaeology told us about the depth of the roman formation, or the way the carthaginian center behaved during the battle? How can we learn anything from Cannae's battlefield about what happened?
He's using literature sources, because they're the only sources that describe how the armies behaved, finding the arms and armours of the dead will not tell us how they were used ˆˆ
@@krankarvolund7771 He uses the literatur discribtion of the terrain (where is the river, where is Canae etc.) to possibly locate the battlefield. He then uses his estimated battlefield, to argue how thin and long the line could be stretched between river and hills on the right. In this chain of arguments the exact battle location would be helpful and that could be located more exact and reliable with archaeology.
Indeed, the movement of river would be more geology rather than archaeology, but since in archaeology there are often probes done for locating findings/buildings and this is a area full of roman era archaeology, it is quite likely, that as a byproduct of excavations, data on the original riverposition was collected.
So I would suggest to help proof your thesis with a wider variety of sources, including archaeology, not only rely on one source (literatur).
On top of this, archaeology can indeed help with the analysis of roman battle tactics, if done right and large scale.
If you google "Battle of Harzhorn", which is an area in germany, you'll find, that through lost shoe nails of roman military sandals the path of the soldiers uphill could be clearly followed. Also the location and rotation of bolts from manuballistae showed not only, where the enemy stood, that was shot upon, but also, where the firing roman soldiers were positioned. The location of parts of roman wagons shows, where those were moving through, when they were attacked by the germans. And the location and rotation of german spearheads tells us, where the germans started a major attack on a roman position.
Ah, and don't forget, what archaeology contributed to a better view on the disaster in Teutoburg forrest (Varus).
Archaeology has a lot of potential, if the position and rotation of findings is correctly documented on a large enough area. Even if there is not much evidence in literatur.
Copenhagen delenda est!
@@krankarvolund7771 "why would a crime scene tell us anything about the crime?" -most incompetent investigator
Okay so as someone who has discussed this battle regularly with his father (a professor) over more than 35 years, my understanding of the inverted crescent is that the Roman army started infantry line to infantry line with the enemy, and the Romans at the front were so green (not just newly raised legions but the least experienced members of those newly raised legions), they started charging toward the point of the centre. As Polybius wrote, the Romans "were hastily closing toward the enemy centre and those enemies who were giving ground". He implies - to my understanding at least - that the Romans were moving toward the centre as they advanced.
Since formation fighting is all about playing "follow the leader" the slight bulge in the Carthaginian line therefore led to the Roman lines not advancing in a straight line, but advancing as though in a (very gradual) funnel. This would likely ending up with the front of each legion bumping up against each other, starting to compress each legion's front slightly (as compact as they already were). Over the width of the battlefield this slight narrowing with each legion would narrow the line to the point the Libyan infantry on each flank didn't have a proper formation in front of them, letting them more easily get most of their lines to the enemy flanks. I'd really like to see how that looks in your model. I'd think it would lead to enough narrowing to allow the Lybians to start to move around to the sides of those flanking legions. It may help explain some of Livy's and Polybius's descriptions of the Lybians on each side facing toward the centre as they enveloped the lines.
I'd agree that by far the biggest factor would have been the Carthaginian cavalry charging in and that the Carthaginian skirmishers would have been a big factor in the encirclement.
So essentially my assumption would be that, based on the words of the sources, the "crush" started much earlier than the encirclement, and that by the time the Romans and Carthaginians made contact there was no longer any spacing between the Roman legions. So for the final shape of the encirclement I'd say it's still a pancake just a more squished up pancake.
The simulation system you've set up is really good. I agree that the modern simulation software helps us to get a much better picture of what is going on with these historical battles. I'd just argue that a little more credence needs to be given to the historical sources to see if their version of events can be made to work as described at least to some degree.
it's important to note that the one of the commanders of the roman army dies very early in the battle and the other fled/was unavailable. this can make a huge difference in how an ary works
Jarrod. This means Roman soldiers from hundreds of metres to each side would ignore the opposition in front of them and work towards the centre. And it assumes that the other side of the line did the same thing in the heat of a battle .I think for whatever reason the Carthaginian Left? flank was so strong in forced the Romans in A sandwich effect does seem likely.
@@paulscottfilms Remember the limitations of visibility on the battlefield. Who is your reference point for your advance: the enemy a few hundred metres away or the men in the legion next to you, a few metres to your right or left? If you're not in the centre, really close to the enemy, it's the men next to you. They wouldn't have been able to tell they were advancing off line until it's too late.
The conscious mistake would have been made only by the legions to the immediate right or left of the centre. They'd be advancing on an exposed flank of the Carthaginian formations that are advanced ahead of the unit to either side of them (even if it's only a few ranks exposed, this would normally be an easily exploitable advantage). From there it's a game of "follow the leader" - or rather "follow the guys to your left/right" to keep close enough to the legion next to you.
At the extreme ends of the line, yes this would end up with the legions advancing to cover the flank of the legion to their right or left instead of advancing straight at the enemy, leading to them being "off line" by - I would guess - about a hundred metres over the course of up to half a kilometre in their advance toward the enemy.
In other words, not enough of a "wrong line of advance" to be completely out of the line of advance of the Lybians on the Carthaginian flank, but enough of an exposed flank for them to get around to the sides, especially if they were already moving to encircle the enemy on those flanks... or at least that's my theory.
45:00 Yes but that is a massive assumption. If you say the lybians have a frontage of 2 divisions, your entire depth doubles! And then the Goldsworthy model makes more sense.
Agreed that the formation can certainly change. But one of the things I came to realize is that increasing the depth of the Libyans doesn't really matter. Either way it's not very reasonable to expect the Legions to be sucked in more than we showed in which case the added depth doesn't help. Furthermore the Libyans are so far from the center that any shape they might take on the flanks still equates to about the same travel time. So I think that the ultimate objective of the Libyan formation was to be deep enough to 100% hold the line and have reserves who are detached enough to redeploy when the time came
@@InvictaHistory I very much think that the "Implications of first contact" section around 103:30 was very fine contribution to describing the battle. Especially taking in the psychology of the unseasoned troops who had years of humiliating defeats and likely anxiousness to fight after lining up for battle the previous day, it seems very likely that flat formation of the Romans gave way to a disrupted charge as you say. What I think you missed in the simulation is how that eagerness would have drawn the Romans into the center and how much the Roman line could have lost it's width in that process leading you to the conclusion, "... it's not very reasonable to expect the Legions to be sucked in more than we showed..."
Taking the view from the front ranks on the Roman middle, the Gauls are in range and those Romans begin the charge. The Romans in the front ranks on either side of the middle point are not within charge range but decide to start the charge anyways. That is a summation of what I believe your first contact disruption hypothesis. What I propose is that the front ranks of the Romans would charge for the closest target which because of Hannibal's curved line is not straight ahead but bent toward the center. If this excited charge continues down the line, than the front units across the whole line would draw toward a tighter and tighter middle of the line.
Now look at the back lines. Your model showed that the backlines can't see much of anything in front and that is without noting the dust being blown into their faces as was related by Livy. What to do as green soldier as the front lines charge gets focused on the center and you can't see much of anything, well follow the person in front of you and hope you are facing the right direction. This would further compress army as the Romans move into the center. If you have seen crowds rush towards an entrance of a building from above, then you can see how the crunch happens.
What problem this causes for your model is that the simulation keeps the same width of infantry throughout the entirety of the battle. The soldiers on your map stay shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole battle. That makes little sense when coupled with the fact that when you push in a melee you put your shoulder into it which requires you to adjust the axis of your body to make the shoulders and legs perpendicular to the enemy line as to opposed to the parallel your model showed. Or at least in the reenactments I've been a part of, when the shield clash happens, you put your left side toward the enemy and your fellow soldiers go from shoulder to shoulder to front to back with each other. This format could potentially collapse the width of the Roman formation by up to half while elongating infantry line to create the tradition blob we think of.
Now, you can say, "so what, now the Libyans are 5 minutes from the center instead of 10 minutes from the center." But the Libyans don't need to make it to the center, they just need to make it to the sides and part of a now smaller back to leave nothing exposed but a cavalry sized hole. In your model, the Romans on the far ends of the infantry charge the Libyans and stay in formation behind that. But that is not what is described at around 20:10 in the sources. The sources describe the Romans following the Celts in the center and ignoring the Libyans(who may have been obscured by dust) till it was too late.
"... objective of the Libyan formation was to be deep enough to 100% hold the line and have reserves who are detached enough to redeploy..." I love this conception of the Libyan's role. It definitely gives the idea that Hannibal was learning from the Romans in how they would filter in heavier troops to sure up gaps where lighter troops lost out. But instead of keeping the heavies in the back line, Hannibal kept them on the sides. A way that fits better with the sources statements, though, is to think of it more like the infantry equivalent of a Mongol feint retreat and encircle: lighter troops draw in the main body into an unorganized blob then heavier troops position on the sides smash. Only instead of Heavy Cavalry running lances through them, it's more like heavily armored guys pressing together like a vice till the cavalry came back.
But, hey, that's not an expert talking, just defending what I was seeing in the sources you put up and some practical experience from reenacting shield walls with some buds over a decade ago. If you have read this far, thank you, and hopefully you can answer this question, "Did the back lines get to draw their swords and if so when?" Because something I was trying to figure out is if the back lines would keep their swords sheathed to stay ready with the javelins or seeing the charge start, get the swords out for close combat. If they didn't unsheathe their swords before the Libyans attacked, would they have been able to fight effectively enough using the javelin as a kind of spear in those close quarters if they couldn't get to their swords in time.
@@InvictaHistory Just a thought, but when it comes to crescent maybe another factor/result of it - other than disrupting the roman charge - was that it pulled the Roman flanks towards the center (the sources kind of allude to this) meaning that the Carthaginian flanks may not have been engaged much if at all, allowing the Carthaginian Libyans and extreme Gauls/Spaniards to advance and encircle the Roman whole.
@@InvictaHistory why putting them on the flanks tho? Why put his worst troops in the chenter the hardest point where fighting starts first and where the enemy is emboldent the most?
Why not put the lybians there?
To save them? Save them for what?
Also they are specificly mentionend to attack the enemys flank. What could that have looked like.
@@InvictaHistory you just igored pne source, livy says there is a break thru and one Interpretation is that hannibal whos in the Center with the gauls his most unreliable troops, premarurly Orders the lybians to the Center as ir retreats, so that they are reafly when the gaulsl in the Center break to squeeze the persuing romans in, just as hannibal had Planed he said.
Wonderful analysis.
However, I believe your modelling suffers from a fatal flaw, with respect to the interaction between cavalry and infantry flank.
Given how fluid that portion of the battlefield is the side with the upper hand i.e. the lybians will always find a way to overwhelm the roman equitae; it's normal to assume that - in waves - the routing of roman cavalry is followed by blistering attacks on its infantry flank, which remember has a slightly larger exposed surface area.
This might not sound like much, but if you think about it, it means that the cavalry does not have to win the flank outright in order to harass, they can do both, at the same time!
And let me reframe this as follows, fruit of the disposition of the troops, a tiny section of the line that has NO tools to oppose its enemy unit counterpart has it such that said unit can freely harass, from a SOFT angle, using the type of weaponry they, the defenders are MOST weak too, a javelin to the RIBS.
Now recall like before that these cavalry men need not even defeat their counterparts to get a shot at the flank, they can have a contingent dedicated to the sole purpose of making DEATH rain from the sky, from the flanks BLINDSPOT, and there is nothing the roman cavalry can do about it.
So this is not a tiny gap, it was a most critical BLUNDER to have left both physical and metaphorical armpit exposed (think of the panic the sheer terror).
Such that, as soon as this gap made contact with an endless barrage of lybian javelins, you can imagine the entire roman line coiling up as if its body had been struck with a dagger in an unprotected and sensitive zone, pain reverberating through lines, rolling up in a ball seeking protection.
Misinterpreting this dynamic is what I think flaws your conclusion.
But to make the full point, the idea of a roman army pressing for miles on end is idiotic of course.
And where I think reality differs most from current descriptions, is that at first it werent even the carthaginians flanks pushing the roman flanks outright, as much as it was the romans curling up to avoid the punishment from the cavalry described above, seeking protection in a herd like fashion.
To dig into how it plays out, as they do so, the flank elongates becoming thiner at its apexes while arching backwards - and towards the roman centre - like a paper folding onto itself.
All the while this folding action is followed up with the carthaginian infantry slowly rotating to pin in place reforming the flank line.
CRUCIALLY, the roman flanks pressure is being relieved by it's own front line that is pushing forward ever so slowly, and it is this slight give in carthaginian centre that enables the roman flanks to rotate into a new stable configuration. BUT ironically, this just means that the lybian cavalry can again resume the process of defeating their counterparts and harasing the flank.
Leading to a cycle of stretch and press that has the flank fold on its own centre and slowly compressing those from the back and the side, the very dimensions the frontline needs to maneuveur.
Notably, it should not take that many rounds of such harrow at the flanks to seriosly restrict the centre frontline's combat effectivness.
Moreover, consider the naturality with which this happens as the romans at the front are being nudged along by their breathren at the back, so it is not as of they are being made aware of what is happening to their flank.
Wherein, at the same time, a signal to disengage to the tune of a drum is not too difficult to follow if the roman press is slow enough, as an example, "one step back to the sound of the drum" is a simple enough drill.
CRITICALLY the mechanical nature of the flanks pressing effect is a ripple that stems from each cavalry charge - cause and effect. So the general need more or less to see the charge, hear the horns, and look for signs of the quivering roman banners on impact to call the drum.
So, while training the troops, drilling the troops, and placing the troops are key as they enable each cycle to happen automatically, without SEEING the pattern in the battleline and timing each STEP back to perfection there is no Cannae. And if you think about it, you can almost anecdotaly claim that Hannibal defeated Rome with a drum and his minds eye.
But what is even more humbling is the fact that he saw ALL of this in a battlefield in his mind before it even happened.
In all, the romans did not JUST push to their death, of course NOT, they were climbed upon, by an cavalry infantry pivot and any historian that has you believe this is fooling themselves.
Thats why its called a feinging retreat with a double envelop in the first place, and this is candidate to one of its finnest Ancient exponents.
It utilizes the psychology of the flank soldier that looks to the safety of the fold as he is being harassed and has him pressing on his fellows at the centre from the back, as he shelters himself away from cavalry projectiles by moving closer towards the "friendly mass".
Eventually rendering them innefective, as the army simply cannot move, after enough compressive force has been applied.
The general knows that if the centre holds for long enough, it is the flank soldiers FEAR that ultimately KILLS them all.
@@NottoriousGG Yep
Great response. I appreciate Invicta’s attempt to understand the battle, but his conclusions were forgivably naive. Once the Roman army was encircled, especially by the highly mobile Libyan cavalry (historically such units often panic, route and overrun encircled infantry units even when those infantry outnumber their enemy. In fact, most battles in all of history were rarely decided by numbers, and instead most often by maneuvering, with the turning point coming at the moment of encirclement or a successful single or double flanking maneuver. Cannae was a phenomenal case of encirclement, wherein Hannibal’s army was able to neutralize the force strength of the Romans. Once he penned them in, and pinned them down the battle was decided. All that remained was how bitterly the Romans would contest the defeat that was already determined.
I think this is a very Astute comment that i would like to add into by noting that the center was being personally led by Hannibal himself and once the skirmishers fell back he very likely used them to plug gaps in the line and stabilize morale where needed. so even when there was some sort of breakthrough he had a ready reserve of bodies to plug the gap while he could reform and reinforce lines, even if it was behind the line as it were the whole matter of the day was a controlled fallback.
I think this is a pretty olausible explanation for a more pronounced arc, taking advantage of the green Roman soldoer ditching discipline and forming up a ball of their own accord.
I'd like to add, that I think Hannibal perceived a weakess in the Roman formations, in that they were drilled to be mobile "vertically" - advance and retreat - but very awkward laterally. The deeper the formation - the worse this flaw, so I'm guessing he set out to exploit this. He musta overloaded his left cav precisely because the legionaries have their shield on the left hand.
3.2 km is exactly 32 times 100 m. It looked like your layout had the infantry width of about 1.8km which is 18 soccer fields not hundreds or thousands of soccer fields. 1,8 km is a bit over a mile. A galloping horse would be about 12 mph so galloping the breadth of the infantry would take about 5 minutes. Which means a few minutes from the center to either side of the cavalry.
You are even more right than you know: a horse can gallop at way more than 12kph: they can get up to 40kph for a mile or so. Napoleonic and later cavalry tended to go at slower speeds as they rode in line and needed to maintain formation, but ancient cavalry used a wedge formation which was much easier to maintain so could go much faster. They could easily do a half mile in substantially less than two minutes.
This is excellent but I do think you might have considered the charge a bit more.
Imagine you are a Roman just to the right of center. When you charge are you charging past the furthest forward Carthaginian unit to attack the slightly further unit that is directly across from you? Or are you going to trend towards the center that is closer to you? Multiply that by the thousands, plus officers trying to close up the line, and I think perhaps there was a lot more compression from the ends towards the center than you represented, which would presumably pull some of the Romans inwards and clear more of the Libyans to attack the flanks.
Your model assumes that each Roman unit charged the Carthaginians directly across from them and I feel like that is a tad unrealistic and I think it is supported by the description of the charge in the source material.
YES!
I remember reading that it was a psychological thing that sucked in the Roman towards the bulging center more than the retreating Carthaginians. The subconscious incline to engage the closest enemy, as opposed to the one at your direct (but farther) front.
That would also mean that the Roman center, though much stronger than their opponent's, might have suffered from the fighting ability/cohesion-hampering effects of compression before even being encircled. That may have contributed to holding the Carthaginian center together for a little more time.
I also suspect that the ''fighting retreat'' didn't have to be communicated to Hannibal's officer that commanded the center (forget his name, too lazy to look it up), but just the expected result of a small force trying to hold a stronger one. I would guess Hannibal's order just might have been to ''Just hold for as long as possible'' knowing that the front would bend naturally from the concentrated enemy force. If the center is indeed receiving more force from the compressed (and therefore concentrated) Roman assault, it also explains the end shape being a concave arc, which springs the trap.
aaand I just remembered it was Hannibal himself in charge of the center lol.
facepalm
@jonathanallard2128 it's the most impressive part of the whole thing, by leading front and center he made known to his troops that they weren't just meant to get slaughtered
@@jacobbb222 ...what do you mean?
@@jonathanallard2128 He could have just lead from the rear and without the morale boost from their leader maybe the center does actually get smashed. By being front and center the troops knew they weren't just bait.
Roughly 16-24k Roman legionaries survived, this is well known. The Roman’s called this a “total loss” because they banished the survivors to Sicily. These banished soldiers made up the core of Scipios army that finally defeated Hannibal. The army probably was between 50-60k men and they lost a little over half. Not crazy
Little over half of the army/unit would make any ancient or modern combat group virtually useless for a long time.
"Did all soldiers die?"
"They are dead to us" - Senate
@@charlescatt4607 Most battles in the ancient world would conclude with a 10% to 20% enemy loss at the very limit. Losing a third or, god forbid, HALF of your standing army is a catastrophic loss. Any other kingdom, city state, empire would be crippled, bankrupt and/or collapse just by the learning the news.
Saying that the romans "just" lost a little over half of their army is like saying that the US airforce just lost half their jets in a single air battle... Just disaster!
It speaks more of Rome not surrendering after this than Hanibal winning it.
@@hostedbysimples5416 Pitched battles in antiquity are incomparable to modern warfare. Up until almost WWI the concept of a "frontline" didn't exist since armies moved in single, or a few coherent formations with at the very best sporadic skirmishing between scouts and foraging parties leading up to the decisive battles. Whereas nowadays war is fought over multiple gradual engagements on a tactical level in order to achieve strategic objectives.
Taking this contemporary notion that 10% losses makes a unit combat ineffective involves considering what their role as self-sustained formation, say a division, should be able to accomplish in their assigned sector without leaving that stretch of the front too porous, or downright undefended.
There are numerous examples from antiquity up until early modernity where entire field armies had been virtually wiped out and new ones were mustered. Nevertheless one has to highlight it usually involved major empires, or nations but to break a lance in favour of the Romans, their martial society exalted just that notion, fulfilment through warfare in stark contrast to the merchant-mindset of the Carthaginians which could not conceive such a notion of "total war".
" *16-24k Roman legionaries survived* "
The most quoted number is around 15k, most of them garrison troops.
" *50-60k* "
Romans say that their army was bigger. It's very rare to exaggerate *your own* numbers.
" *they lost a little over half* "
It's also very rare to exaggerate your own losses, and Romans say they lost 50-60k dead, plus some taken prisoner (4k-ish).
What we know for sure is that they lost 30 senators. You'd expect that if half of the army somehow survived, the senators should be among them.
I always assumed that after Roman Calvary was beaten, the Carthaginian Calvary simply was attacking Romans from the rear in several places and running down any fleeing Romans after they have been flanked, not literally standing in place and fighting romans all day.
I also assumed that’s how several Romans survived the battle, since not all survivors were from the cavalry.
The army was not literally surrounded at first, it was just pinned in place in a way they couldn’t move without dying.
With enemy cavalry free behind them and entire Carthaginian army in front of them, running away in panic would be suicide, so they stuck together, maybe trying to beat the Carthaginian infantry in front of them, with Hannibal and his men simply holding the line and killing anyone trying to break through them. Anytime the Romans walked back as a group, the Carthaginians followed and killed the front ranks until the Romans broke or were actually surrounded.
At one point, the flanks and many other Romans could have decided to simply run for it, thousands got ran down by Numidian cavalry, while those in the middle were actual encircled like we see most of the time.
Hannibal wouldn’t even need to fight romans all day after outflanking with the cavalry, simply keep them in place and slowly kill them systematically as they desperately tried to stay together and survive while those trying to escape were getting hunted down by his cavalry, with handfuls of romans actually making it out since Hannibal did not have enough cavalry to chase after them all and had to focus only on the largest groups of fleeing romans to charge at and kill either with slings, javelins or swords like we usually think they did it.
Cavalry also wouldn’t have to run all the time, simply keep romans from scattering while the infantry finishes the killing and encircling that happened likely with skirmishers and other trolls at the end of the battle.
Good assessment. I can buy this. I think the size of the armies was probably a lot less too. And the Romans inflated the numbers after the fact
@ I wouldn’t say they inflated the number of their casualties. Also, didn’t Hannibal spent like 5 years in Italy after Cannae before going back to Spain and Africa?
I feel like this is not getting talked about enough in the history books and channels. It took Rome around 5 years to kick Hannibal from their own backyard. Not even backyard. Hannibal was pretty much going around Rome’s home, smashing their stuff and killing army after army for 5 years before he was called by his own government to save their asses after they fucked up war in Spain.
The man basically spent 5 years terrorizing and vandalizing Rome’s homeland for years. That’s gotta count for something
@@michasalamon8315 He was actually running around Italy for 13 more years after Cannae not just 5! Makes the whole feat even more crazy.
That definitely is very likely what happened but at end you snuck in saying carthaganians used trolls to hunt down the Romans. You can't drop a bombshell like that and not tell us more
The calvary isn't staying in place as they would be charging and then pulling back and then repeating.
I did not expect something this comprehensive and convincing. Needed to go to bed, watched the entire video. Didn't realize it was "feature lenght" and it's 01:54 am now.
Great job!
Nice to know I'm not alone.
I'm doing the exact same thing
Hi, I'm a historian, I really like your work, once I made a similar model, but with Paint 😅. Said this, I think that one thing that you have overlooked is that during the fight the Roman army wouldn't have maintained the gabs between the units. Also, I'm one of the few that thinks we shouldn't consider everything that happened as a predetermined plan. Probably Hannibal had simply a vague idea of what would happen
When he started talking about the huge lenght of the battle line and showing how small part of it any individual soldier could see, I thought he would draw the conclusion that the whole crescent shape is a construct by people analysing the battle afterwards, not part of any deliberate plan, and if it happened at all, no one on the battlefield would be able to see it anyway.
It never made much sense to me to try to march 40 000 guys in a formation that is a couple of kilometers long doing fancy manouvering. It would take insane coordination to pull off.
@greghall4836 you are right, it is basically impossible for the people in the centre and on foot to have noticed such things. But you also have to consider that almost 80% of the people in the centre died. Probably, if it was really present, the moon shape would have been notified by the people of the cavalry, which also managed to escape.
@greghall4836 the point he made about the psychology of the charge is actually interesting. Imagine being a Roma, you start charging with your companion in the centre, but you have to run much more than them, at that point the Carthaginian soldiers on the flank would have fought tired soldiers. Maybe it was because of this that the crescent inverted its shape.
Exactly. The model is wrong because the Roman soldiers wouldn't be spread out like that in PARADE formation. They would be in BATTLE formation with interlocking shield and little to no space between each soldier. So the model should actually be TWICE as short in length.
So either he picked the wrong terrain OR he didn't take into account that the flood plain may have been even wider in ancient times; compressing the battlefield between the river and the hills even more so.
Consider this, the CLIFF at the Battle of Thermopylae NO LONGER EXISTS. How many Roman towns are buried under the dirt due to NATURAL flooding in of mud over 2000 years?!! The build-up of sediment over those same 2000 years could have altered the modern flood plain DRASTICALLY. The river should probably be much further east in certain bends of the river OR the hills would have extended further west but would have been eroded over time
I think from a soldiers or units point of view you're gonna drift towards the nearest fighting or the part of the enemy line that is giving way/breaking.. With the initial outward bulge in the Carthaginian army - that's initially towards the centre. If you're near the flank, you can see those big heavily armed enemy troops - you want to shy away from them if you can. When the catharginians start to withdraw - you're tasting victory and want to press that advantage where they are withdrawing, in the centre. On your flanks those big heavy armed guys are pressing in, and the deeper, roman lines get into the pocket, the more press there is on their flanks from the rest of the enemy. Everything is making you want to crush up towards the centre. Everything is compressing your line.
Can't watch this video...after 2240 years, I'm still traumatized.
Why, don’t you like Hanibal?
@@fafa8 never forgive, never forget
@@organic3132 Carthago Delenda Est.
@@JosephKano But Hanibal is still the most capable general of all time.
@@organic3132 Scipio defeated him. Capable? Why not... You guys are the same of "Rommel was a genius" right? 🤭
A plausible explanation for the cul de sac which is supported by the sources as well as the battle of lake trasimene is that the carthagenian center actually gave out (and maybe the wedge formation even was supposed to make sure the center gave out first) so that the imexsperienced romans instead of keeping the correct direction went for the path of least resistamce and funneled themselves towards the middle, helping to pronounce the crescent shape.
Maybe the hole could have been plugged by reserves as it's said that Hannibal held the center at some point.
I think this makes sense - he put his Gauls in the centre and who weren't exactly known for being indomitable (and they were his most replaceable troops too). I think like other Punic battles the Carthaginians actually did rout, but Hannibal was effective enough to keep the rest of his army together and/or plug that gap.
But the whole point is that a funnel effect could not take place, The line is estimated at 1.6 km. In any case a very wide line
@@paulscottfilms He says they "funneled themselves toward the middle." He didn't mean a "funnel effect" the way you mean it.
You forgot to account for how many Giscos each army had. A truly important piece of information if you think about it
I believe just one, but truly and irreplaceable one
Giscos stood out because they were among the few Carthaginians whose names didn't begin with 'H'.
Haven't watched everything yet but yeah, the romans were routed at Cannae. The fact that the senate punished the survivors and refused the ransom of captured troops proved that some kind of a rout happened. The troops are problematic in the senate's eyes.
Scapegoat. You are forgetting that key concept. Scapegoats are politicians bread and butter. And Roman military leaders were in fact also politicians. The only thing we can trust with absolute certainty is archeological evidence. You cannot assume that a rout occurred or didn’t occur unless we can find the battlefield and count corpses. Anything else is purely speculative.
@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael yes, but I'm speculating more on how did they suffered this much casualties. It's a mystery how hannibal inflicted it without causing some kind of a panic, rout so to speak. And it's illogical they sent away thousands of able bodied men away while suffering manpower issues at home that they set the precedent of using proletarii as mainstay of legionaires. My speculation is the men were so panicky and scared, there's a seed for accusation of cowardness, that the senate refused to accept them back into the society seeing that the people were already grieving so much and sent them away to sicily. If they "infected" the populace, they couldn't had kept the people from collapsing and would had surrendered.
But yeah. They could had been used as scapegoats.
@@linming5610 The fact is rome could create new legions in a short time after the battle. How? DId the romans become adults in 2 years in such numbers and training?
Probably many people deserted and counted as losses because deserting it was punished, so nobody could count a sh--t and for objective reasons new legionaries were not punished in many numbers, but officials were.
@@linming5610 Interesting take. Thank you for taking the time to reply. You could be dead on for all I can say lol My opinion is that if that many people all died in the same place, then we should be able to find some remnants of the carnage, but as far as I am aware, no one has found a site that fits the accounts of what supposedly happened. If Hannibal had really done so well against the Romans why did he just leave Italy altogether? Without actually doing any permanent damage to his mortal enemies. Why would Carthage demand he return? Why would he listen to them? I personally believe very little about what is written on the Punic wars to be true. When I look at all the myths and misinformation surrounding the second world war; which happened only yesterday compared to the Punic wars, and I just cannot be convinced by scant damaged and incomplete accounts. I make the assumption that the general course of the war matches the accounts but I am unconvinced of any of the specifics. Again thank you for taking the time to have a bit of discussion!
@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael all i can say is, these things is another topic that deserve their own discussion. I welcome disproving me based on the sources but if you block the discussion with, "i don't trust the sources so everything might be false or don't believe in anything so you're wrong" , you're just frustrating me bro.
I do consider the possibility things may be vastly exaggerated but that's not what I comment here for.
On the time issue: Battles took (and still do) hours and hours. It was folks fighting each other with swords (in formations) for many hours. A slugfest.
In the heap of battle, ten minutes fly by very quickly because of adrenaline. So I personally would caution to describe ten minutes as long in the context of a battle.
As I always hear the story told, it wasn't that Hannibal ordered his troops to perform in a certain way, rather he understood how the battle would evolve.
Very much that yeah.
what was most probable was the Romans were disordered and trampled themselves.
Yup, he was a master at understanding the flow of the battle, especially if he could dictate the starting conditions of said battle. He certainly knew his center would cave a bit, and he certainly expected the inexperienced Romans to tunnel vision and funnel into the perceived opening in the Carthaginian line. He just had to make sure the frontline didnt completely collapse and seeing as he knew his cavalry would be superior, it was just a matter of time and the anvil and hammer strategy was complete.
Dont forget that in battles like this the soldiers rotated and weren't constantly at the front fighting. When the romans got bunched up, which they were to start with, they probably couldn't rotate as easily, whereas the carthaginians could. This would have had a big impact on effectiveness
Sorry to tell you but that scene at the start of Episode 1 of Rome was fictional. There is no evidence or account of Romans rotating their front line during an engagement. There is definitely no indication of Iberians, Gauls or Lybians ever doing this either.
@jarrodbright5231 don't know what tv you're talking about mate, but the soldiers did rotate.
@@jammybizzle666 He's refering to HBO Rome
I have yet to come across any legitimate source that states the Roman rotate front troops during actual battle. They did rotate troops during lulls in battle but not like the ones in HBO. Atleast I have yet to come across any source that actually says so. I would imagine actively rotating troops during actual close quarters battle would be difficult to pull off given the chaos and noise.
@@Yunacons While this no way means that the Romans did in fact do this, as I'm not familiar with the sources of this topic, rotation of soldiers in the midst of battle did actually occur. I read a lot about medieval battles, specifically those that took place in the middle east, and this was utilized by Timur''s army.
Great job and certainly food for thought.
Even if the flanking didn't happen, the return of the cavalry combined with kms long battle line would have been sufficient to encircle most of the army. The main factor in my eyes is the rawness of the Roman army.
Buncha battle hardened Carthaginians, Gauls, and Africans beat up on a buncha kids from Rome who were handed a sword, and drilled for a few months. Beyond that, many of the recruits came from allied cities who were already sensing that Hannibal was winning.
Now imagine you're not even from Rome. You get called up into a militia that gets sent to join a legion. You're not a soldier. You were busy sowing your fields when they snagged you from the forum, more or less involuntarily.
It would only have to go bad for a short time before you turned tail.
Panic. There is no model in existence to account for when I watch a comrades life.end inches from me.
Not to mention Hannibal was 2 for 2 on humiliating defeats by this stage, which would have only added to the psychological disparity between the two sides.
@@singtothesilencethe Roman army had 2 grave flaws. They leadership was extremely overconfident due to the size of their army while the actual soldiers were terrified of facing Hannibal’s army. Combine this and the general inability to organize and control such a large army effectively and you end in disaster
I would say all your videos are very interesting, but this one, is especially interesting for me.
I am an early medieval X.-XI. C. ''Viking'' reenactor and if we have the numbers at demos we do bigger battles. (50-200) fighters. Although these numbers do not get close to that level of armies but the idea of group psychology is very nice to be incorporated in your idea.
Often I find myself battering away in the center of the line and believe me, the scope of vision and situational awareness is drastically reduced to a few meters in front of you and maximum one or two fighters to both of your sides. My brain knows I will not die, but the survival instinct during ''games'' like this is nearly impossible to suppress. Combine that with fatigue, prolonged exposure to severe levels of adrenaline, maybe lack of sleep, heath, cold. All these factors have massive effects on your subconscious.
Sometimes I come across people who have not yet had the chance to experience the chaos of a battlefield (even if it is a hobby, it can get pretty intense), who proclaim that they could do this, that, hold a line, etc. Well, my answer to that is a solid no.
Don't underestimate the power of your companions. If one guy next to you takes one step back, chances are high you will do too and there is no reason at all for the next in line would not do the same.
True, I have no experience in real combat, nor am I a roman veteran with countless battles under my belt, I do not train daily, I have not experienced the thrill of life-and-death combat, nor have I smelled the stench of the dead, the screaming of the wounded (one exception to that when a dude got overrun by a horse, but still, it was one fighter and we all stopped and he got immediate medical care). From this I can assume a trained grizzled veteran would have had a much much higher threshold to factors like this and the fact that from the center it must have seen as if the battle was won, but still, the moment you have anyone behind you that is not your battle buddy, and wants to kill you, even the most favorable conditions can become total chaos and mayhem.
So to conclude my text, it was lovely to see this detailed breakdown of the battle. On one hand, it must have been terrifying, but on the other hand, I would give so much to be able to experience something like this. (After which I would probably conclude it was not worth the trauma).
Thank you so much for again stunning me with your content. Please keep up the breakdowns like this.
Keep it up!!
I have done some reenactment fun fighting with about 30 of my buddies with foam-tipped swords, spears, and shields and can definitely attest to the mechanics of group-think. Even though we only played according to "touch" rules, the innate desire to not get hit is definitely there, especially when those who got "hit" had to run a good 400 meters as a punishment. You are constantly trying to be a chainlink that holds that line together, mostly for your own safety! When that unified enemy line gets close, it is almost suicidal to break away from your line and rush the enemy of or to try to hold your ground when your line falls back. It is far more effective for a leader to guide the effort to press forward or to fall back so that the integrity of the line is maintained.
Related to Cannae, we did one scenario in particular where one team tried to stop another team from crossing a bridge and the "help" that some rear teammates would foolishly give by pressing up and pushing the front ranks towards the meat-grinder was extremely problematic and provides a vague idea of the problems of getting packed in. One needs at least a little space in order to operate effectively. But guys in the rear who were new to this whole game were eager to help somehow and needed to be taught (or shown by putting them in the front next time :P). I can only imagine what would happen if they were trying to flee through me...
The Golden Rule of Modelling and Simulations:
Garbage in = Garbage out.
The Dirty Secret of Modelling and Simulations:
Our inputs are often garbage, but we try our best. The good ones will tweak their models and inputs until they reflect real life known outcomes.
Real data is needed to validate models. Unvalidated models shouldn't be used to make conclusions.
They present a fun toy but even just the basic starting formations are so simplified/abstracted that it's worse than the simple diagrams shown in other works - at least for those it's obvious that they are abstractions.
Impossible without recording or impossibly precise description of battles
@@mattickista The Black Art of Modelling and Simulations:
When you really have nothing accurate to work with, make an educated guess based on your experience and hope for the best.
@@v.y.o. @Invicta saw the obvious abstractions, went "this is not realistic" then proceeded to make an even less realistic one.
Yes indeed. I cannot recall a computer model I ever felt sure about. I couldn't get used to the absurd wagging tail on the horse A girl model on the other hand is entirely better
Great to see you reference the Ancient Warfare magazine, issues XII-5 and XII-6 - a great magazine well worth subscribing to. Really good to see you diving into this issue. Too many hobbyists ignore this width problem. Your linking to the sources is so refreshing.
With the wedge, you imply rank and file for the Gauls - I don't think that's required. For example, with the battles against the Helvetii, especially Bibracte, where the battle seems to have seen the Helvetii pushed back (retreat) over a couple of KMs, but still fight back.
5:39 “The most simplified version is obviously going to be the History Channel one.”
*It’s sad that we expect that nowadays. The inaccuracies have wandered that far.*
At least they left out the King Kong shock platoon that everyone has tried to cover up or whatever it is the History channel talks about these days.
"Aliens!"
I'm so old I remember when the History Channel had quality informative programming
@@doncampbell7487 OK gramps, get back in the wheelchair.
One thing the way I would interpenetrate the quote about the Romans Pressing in after the Carthaginians is that the men on the flanks were moving towards the center, this would also make a bit of sense with how you show that at the flanks the enemy in front is actually quite far away and thus it seems reasonable to push more towards the center as it looks like its giving way.
Especially for the men in the rear of the formation as they would have a gap or at least the impression of more space in the middle, so the officers may think they're reinforcing success when all they're doing is leading to a human crush. And they probably wouldn't even really know this could be a problem due to the low training of the Roman army and even the men who were experienced they wouldn't have fought in/with a formation this dense so sending more men into "gap" probably isn't as much of concern with a "standard" army formation.
Also if the enemies are in a wedge, the the unit towards the cebter is closer than the unit in front of you, maybe the wedge really was more pronounced in order to incentivise the green roman soldier to charge towrds the center, ensuring confusion and makung the romans easier to flank as well as damoing the effectiveness of the assault the closer it got to the flanks.
it seems like the main issue the romans had was that they didn't maintain a second line at their rear if the front line got a to tight they could just order the guys behind them to stop pushing up until the cavalry arrived if the triarii and principes maintained distance they would have been hit hard by the cav but would have allowed breathing room to fight and reinforce
I myself have studied the Battle of Avarayr using the oldest (sadly, largely secondary) sources available on the subject.
I share your pain and your satisfaction in deep-dive researching these subjects! *It’s fun to play the expert, then to realize that you’ve put in so much effort that you ARE the expert!*
That's how I self-educated into Software engineering.
Just look at Gaugamela battle scene from Alexander movie to see how big ancient battlefields were. Even number of troops was very close to Cannae, 100k Persians and 45k Macedonians.
Hmm I think I see an issue. None of the game models really take into account troop compaction. Game models always maintain space between soldiers but when drawn into the crescent the men didnt have enough space to maneuver. Just my two cents but giving way at the middle could have the effect of compacting the men at the center first when the retreating army starts to hold firm. After that you use the units at the side of the crescent to push in and create more compaction of troops. Then the cav rides down men who cant even dodge or move.
One thing I noticed that you glossed over was the part of the eyewitness report that the Romans concentrated towards the center in pursuit of the enemy.
Consider if the entire Roman line started to charge when the centers met and never redressed ranks, that makes for a disorganized mob compressing towards the middle. That would cause something of middle ground between the sandwich formations you depicted and the traditional circle. This would also explain why observers would see it as a circle while it's more of a sandwich that blobbed a little to the middle.
It seems to me that the initial crescent played far more role in this battle then how much they retreated. The retreat was most likely mostly important from the point of denying a more intense battle that would cause too many casualties for the line to hold, not so much for creating room. But it would also pull in the Romans from the sides towards the middle.
One other thing I wonder about, the skirmishers, to me so does it seem natural that they would be the ones helping out with preventing any breakthroughs rather then the flanking forces. They would after all be resting up behind the main forces and pretty much ready to engage any breaches.
The skirmishers could have been screening the Libyans.
1:11:22 this raises a larger question. How important was flanking in general. With large, thin armies it is only a small area of contact yet this strategy has a gigantic presence in militairy history.
I believe there is a domino effect. Imagine for a second that we are playing with some kind of chess piece. Any chess piece that ends up in front of an enemy is "engaged" and cannot move. If a piece is threathen by 2 enemy peice, it is removed. This way you can easily see that a solid frontline makes an impassable wall, but flank it and its sides will fold like dominos and the situation devolves with enemy troops becoming free to encricle (your line keeps shrinking while they don't take any losses).
This is obviously an oversimplification, but crushing the flanks makes the rear vulnerable and any army seeing their rear exposed in any way will start to panic (their only means of escape+help is being threaten).
I also think that attack a flank will disturb an army's formation (the wings will start turning backwards towards the center as to prevent an envelopment), which might have occurred here and contributed to the Roman army's broken formation to become more like a "blob" (a very stretched out one, but still not the straight and rectangular formation they started with).
@@Tryford9
Exactly. There's a reason why people talk about "rolling up" the flanks. The furthest unit has to hold or the battle becomes completely untenable quickly. The first flanked unit already has to defend against the enemy battle line and the soldiers flanking them. If they rout, the next unit has to defend against their own opponents, the first unit's opponents and the flanking unit. And so on.
Impressive ammount of work put into this vid, i salute you and the team🫡
Amazing work. Just a small critical remark. I do not think the carthaginian skirmishers could have supported the center by throwing projectiles over it. As far as the javelineers are concerned, they had for sure exhausted their weapons during the initial skirmishes. Even in case they did not, throwing even a light javelin over a formation 30 meter deep is quite risky. Historical reenactement has proven that throwing anything ( except the plumbatae) more tha 30 meters away is quite problematic. The slingers could have indeed helped the center but at a heavy cost since, again, reenactement demostrated that often there is no absolute control over the trajectory of the shot. A mistake of few degrees would have inflicted lethal injuries to the celtic and iberian infantry. But it is safe to assume that eventually the skirmishers completed the encirclrnent. As you said, the decisive factor was, again, the cavalry. The Romans committed a stupid mistake: they did not support the roman cavalry with a couple of legions. Caesar found himself facing the same problem at Pharsalus and turned it to his advantage. Congratulations for your immense and meticulous work and for your channel in general, which is simply the best of the best.
my guess is that the skirmishers at the flanks went around the flanks while the ones in the center helped plug holes in the line also they probably thought to bring extra ammo in the rear for after the first phase of battle one thing I really wish total war would have impemented were non combat support like ammo/water/medical units to replenish guys who are tired hurt and out of ammo.
I disagree. First of all you can advance through the ranks and chuck your javelin from ten feet away from the enemy. Secondly, the reenactment you're referring to was done without an amentum/spear thrower. Javelins were always thrown with one, and furthermore, their javelins would have been lighter than the plumbata and that of the Iberian/celtic infantry. Reenactments done with an amentum demonstrate a range far in excess of 30m. These people were raised hunting with this weapon from when they were a child, they could hit a rabbit at 30m as a routine shot. Delivering a simple parabolic volley over the line of battle into that giant roman mass would be easy.
@smokeyhoodoo it is possible but it requires perfect co9rdination with the unut in front of you. Fo not gorget that the Celts and the Iberians were hard pressed . Letting other units penetrating and editing trough and from the ranks could have had distruttive consequences
I imagine some parts of the Gaulish line were probably thicker in some places or perhaps more entwined with the enemy definitely seems risky to toss them blindly into a battle.
The Triarri not turning around and facing the returning cavalry and or Libyans getting around the flanks doesnt makes sense to me unless there were holes that punched through the main Carthaginian line. Or the compression was so bad, the officers were trying to unfck the front that they didnt see the danger in the rear? Awesome to see the battle displayed and explained like this. Truly looking forward to the rest of this series
Don't forget the Roman skirmishers. They were behind the most of the Triarii and might have been blocking their view of the rear, covering the Punic cavalry's advance. The Triarii on the flanks might've seen it coming, assuming that this is not precisely where the "Lybians charged at the flanks" (I'd imagine the back line moving to flank the Romans instead of trying to get behind them or back to reinforce their center in case of breakthrough).
And if the skirmishes fell back on the Triarii in disarray it wouldn’t matter if the Triarrii was aware. Great point.
This is what happens when you over analyze and you start to question your own logic and then you so deep into it. You have to make mental gymnastics to justify it...
Edit: We don't even know how the Romans engage the front ranks. We have sources of how they march, ranks, how they approach the enemy. But we have no sources of how they actually engage the enemy. This video is based on like 6 assumptions 1 of which is crucial (Deployment and engagement) which we have no information on.
Right. It is unlikely that the concentration of the line would be the same for both armies. I doubt they had a talk and decided > what say we keep the lines to 1.6 km old chap <
I suggest that the Carthaginians were very strong on both flanks and cavalry , The skirmishers could have supported the main front attack
I'm sure I have said this before about your channel but seriously after studying ancient military history ( with a focus on Rome) for 50 plus years this sort of updated meticulous detail is exactly what I'm looking for!!!
Thank you friend for all the "true size " productions.
I will admit that I am quite partial to Delbrück, but I have to point out that you used his old thesis for the location and orientation, which he later revised, most certainly in orientation. As Konrad Lehman pointed out, the line from Polybius that is often interpreted as "the Roman front looking south" is actually correctly translated as "the Romans took the position to the south"; so in actuality, the Carthaginians were the ones facing south.
On the matter of the actual formation, the "crescent" - in both directions - might just be referring to the way the Libyan troops were positioned relative to the center; that is, in a deep column as opposed to flat like the rest, rather than any actual great bending of the line. This would be further accentuated as the center of the line would slightly bow out during marching; the line was probably intended and achieved as a straight phalanx. In the same way, the Libyans would probably have marched behind the cavalry rather than between it and the center, with the Roman phalanx somewhat longer than the Carthaginian one on both ends. A decent number of skirmishers on both sides (that is both Roman and Carthaginian) would have accompanied the cavalry on the flanks and fought together with them as well.
As you correctly pointed out, the wast majority of the encirclement would have been done by the cavalry, whose attack in the rear would essentially have stopped the entire Roman phalanx as the back lines of the Romans were no longer pushing on the front and trying to turn around, yet unable to create a coherent front.
The importance placed on the Libyans flanking, rather than correctly attributing the victory to the cavalry probably stems from the fact that Polybius was himself citing the Carthaginian account, commissioned if not authored by Hannibal himself, which didn't want to admit that the dependable Libyans were placed on the flanks to preserve their lives and strength over the more unreliable allied and mercenary contingents of Gauls and Iberians which were placed in the thick of the fighting in the center and bore the majority of the losses.
By the fiction of making their part crucial for the victory, rather than just the completeness of said victory, Hannibal could avoid the accusation of sacrificing his allies to preserve his own forces.
I'd love to see something similar for a Napoleonic battle, cause there are so many misconceptions about them too.
The more I see these animations of huge formations moving flawlessly on a battlefield, the more I'm convinced we don't actually have much of a clue how these battles were conducted.
To be fair, getting people to march in formation isn't that hard.
Don't assume professionals don't also think this, though. Read some Nosworthy, or go back even as far as Du Picq.
@@boruta1034I mean, that's not really true. This is an underestimated factor in military history: marching cohesively at speed requires drums and drilled cadence. This is one of the reasons the Romans succeed to such a dehree; every other army marches much slower on the battlefield, because if it doesn't, it has to reform its ranks constantly.
@@boruta1034 Maybe on the parade ground, and even then people sometimes screw it up - they get out of step, turn in the wrong direction, don't halt when the rest of the formation stops, etc. Now add in noise, dust/rain/snow, heat/cold, irregular terrain, you or the men around you pissing or shi**ing themselves, unfriendly people trying to stick pointy metal objects into you - I think it then gets a lot more complicated.
@@boruta1034 Having served in the military, I can assure you that it is.
One thing about orderly retreating, that isn't necessarily the case. The center of the crescent would be hit first, take casualties first and thus get pushed back first. So rather than an orderly retreat, it might just be being pushed back more because they are weakened more/earlier. The flanks would engage slightly later so wouldn't give up terrain as fast timewise and might get reinforced by the libyans from the flanks if necessary (who also don't need to push up, but rather use their unit size to hold ground and let the Romans push somewhat passed).
The center also doesn't necessarily have to suddenly stop falling back as a choice for the envelopment tactic to work, rather a surge through the roman army from for example the flanks getting pushed in and the back getting attacked and pushed forward might reduce their effectiveness on the frontlines due to being more condensed and not having proper room to organise and spreading fear to the front lines. Moreover part of the skirmishers might have been kept in reserve to reinforce the center before it would break/when it should stop giving ground.
I do not believe in the idea of an orderly fallback of the carthaginian center (considering the troops there and the scale, it would require too much discipline imo), but a predicted forced push back might have been an intended tactic/consequence of the initial troop arrangement. A gamble for sure, but isn't that Hannibal often does, take a gamble people wouldn't expect?
Metatron reaction incoming 😂
Love this channel btw
More of this format please! I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the homework portion and the analysis. This was an extremely insightful video. And ironically enough I am currently reading Goldsworthy’s Cannaw at the moment so the timing here couldn’t have been more perfect. Cheers!
Hannibal to the Romans after the battle: "Please sir, Cannae have sum more?"
More??
@ventu2295 more
And the Romans replied: "Yes! We will see you at Zama".
Ur content has grown so much over the years, videos like these where you have obviously done tons of research are so cool and would love to see more
0:03 giggity
It looks like bullocks
Something that just came to my mind in terms of the crescent formation: Since you were talking about the whole attacking-psychology, I could imagine that the crescent formation led to the romans not marching straight but more drawn to the middle, since the carthaginian-guys that were closest were those standing diagonally to the roman line. So in my opinion it's seems possible that the lybians weren't as heavily engaged as in your simulation.
"The math simply ain't mathing" is one of my favorite phrases and I like to use it whenever possible ahaha. Something about that line is just so funny but gets the point across.
Also, i think your computer is screaming in pain with that simulation lol
EDIT: Is there any geological studies on the river to back up the idea the river might have moved in any significant manner?
That crowd crush is scary. Really brings home how horrible a way to die.
Thats why Cannae is so famous. The math didn’t math but Carthage really did WHOOP that ass
This is what I appreciate about you! The effort you go to in your research as well as to help us laymen understand is wonderful. The diagrams begin to paint a picture but I didn't grasp the massive size of this event until you popped into the simulation at 48:00. The amount of coordination, communication and training of soldiers and officers alike just to produce and control an army like this is mind-boggling. It also shows just how much of a gamble Hannibal took deploying his army as he did. It looks like the Roman army should crush the Carthigian center and win the day yet we know that didn't happen. Thanks!
isn't it more likely that the troop numbers are exaggerated
I think this is a strong possibility. These were well organised states but they still only covered very small areas which supported only a few thousand fighting men in mediaeval times.
What you miss and which is almost always forgotten is that the general for Rome ordered the soldiers to fight much closer to each other then they where trained to do. So your width is wrong it was much less. Trevor Nevitt Dupuy is one of them that writes about that.
Maybe the size of each army was exaggerated. I have always thought that ancient armies having tens of thousands of troops was just storytellers wanting to make a cool story.
I’m glad someone mentioned this! I have always thought that myself. What would the population of Rome have to be to be able to have that many men who could be farming die or get captured? What happened to the tens of thousands of widows and their children? Look at the size of napoleonic armies for example. The population of Europe was significantly larger but the armies are generally much smaller.
@@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael Rome had a census, so their man power reserves are known and you can’t forget the Italian allies
No, the sizes for the battle are well accounted for. Where you very much cannot trust the numbers however is with the Greeks and the Persians, because the Greeks exaggerated wildly. The Greeks claimed something like a 200,000 strong Persian army being defeated at Marathon for example, when it is quite likely that the 10,000 strong Greek force *outnumbered* the Persians.
@@randomhistory788 I have never personally seen an ancient Roman census so I can't testify to what one might've said. Even if there is one for that specific year that is irrefutably authentic, how can any of us know for a fact that it is correct? My point is that for ME personally archeological evidence seems to be the best evidence available. Now I am by no means an expert, but if there was a battle like Cannae where we think it happened; where are the tens of thousands of corpses? Broken weapons and the like? It's not like we can read the Cathiginians account either. That's LONG gone. The only sources of period information on this battle, to my knowledge, are quite a long time after the battle supposedly happened. The best source is 40 years after the fact. And the only other is 200 years after the fact. I would argue it is very possible the battle never happened at all. Unless we have indeed found the site of the battle, how could you possibly know for sure that it happened at all? It's not like we have thousands of letters to widows and such to examine. Without the written words of just a few human beings that can and do lie all the time, is there strong evidence that "Hannibal" even existed? I am by no means an expert, but I've never seen anything claiming to provide such. If I am unaware of something that you know, I would very much like to hear about it. Thank you for taking the time to respond and have a discussion!
@@MajinOthinus Thank you for sharing! But please see my comment to the other gentleman because I believe I touch on several things relevant to what you posted as well! The most important I will summarize here for you.
1) Why are you so confident on the numbers?
2) How can you be absolutely certain the battle happened at all without anyone ever finding and excavating the site?
And finally, if you are able to provide answers to the above I would very much appreciate if you took the time to share. Learning new things is one of the great pleasures of life to me.
Very well done! My biggest gripe is your distance from skirmishers to the main force. Being able to see your main force 1 kilometer away is nice, sure, but it would not save them. In your own example you can see how quickly a sprinting horse can cover that ground, I am certain that the skirmishers would go no further than the time it would take them to run back to their lines to beat a horse coming from further and I am also confident that they would know how far that is.
Interesting arguments however nothing convincing of proof of any obvious "Lie" as suggested in the video title. Was fun to see a deeper dive of the battle overall.
As always, i applaud the effort and skill displayed to put all of this together. That said....
Feels like somewhere along the video Invicta got so immersed into the simulation ( Wich is an amazing show ) that the proper analysis was left as an aftertought.
Nothing changes from the basic, agreed upon events.
One thing that a lot of sources probably won't mention is the frequency of which Soldiers would flee the lines only to gather their wits or be rounded up by their side's light cavalry and rejoin the line. This is frequently mentioned by many generals in history and still happens to soldiers to this day including in Ukraine and Russia. I hypothesize that the rear flanking cavalry would not necessarily form a solid "battleline" to "bottle" the rear but to mostly interdict fleeing men and interrupt C&C which would theoretically be in the rear. This could cause a panic among the general masses and condense and mix the various formation which would destroy cohesion. A deep and numerous formation such as the roman's would be more susceptible to this. Not to mention if you get so many people packed into one place, especially green unexperienced people, the panic caused could create a stampede in which many would be trampled, crushed while standing (such as in modern itaewon) or even be affected by heatstroke with all of the heat of the field and the body heat of others. The Numidian cavalry in the rear could cause this simply with it's presence. The Carthaginian lines may have bowed naturally due to them being pushed. But since their lines were thinner, the fleeing infantry could more easily reform in the line and keep fighting. This would not be possible with the thicker and harder to control Roman lines. It's also possible that without their cavalry the Romans simply could catch and reform fleeing romans. Scipio himself was one of these people that took flight. I agree that the double envelopment is highly exaggerated and it probably wasn't intentional, but the role of the cavalry still remains the decisive factor as it was also in the battle of Zama. In short, the current story gives hannibal more credit than he probably deserves but that is the story of every general is it not?
It really doesn't need to be so deep. The thing with a phalanx, especially one as green as this one, is that it relies entirely on the pressure generated by the rear lines to physically push the frontline through the enemy phalanx. A battle between to phalanxes is less a fight to kill the enemy, so much as a giant push to break through. Sort of like the opposite to a tug of war. But the moment that a credible threat to the rear appears, all that pressure just vanishes as the rear lines try to turn around and defend themselves. The whole formation just stops, confusion breaks out and the ones in the middle get crushed, as the rearmost lines fall back in trying to form a coherent frontline to protect themselves and the actual frontline gets shoved back or flees back because the physical pressure behind them is suddenly gone, yet the enemy is still pushing from the front. Once you're packed tightly enough, there is also no chance of restarting the push in any direction as your range of movement is now too constricted and any serious effort will just result in being crushed to death.
@ the theory that people were basically rugby players with weapons is often disputed more and more. Most experts now says it has no historical basis. But regardless it is not applicable after the rise of Swiss pikes. whereas me constantly retreating and returning to battle is recorded throughout history and is a fact. Not to mention friction and momentum on the line would apply to the front line and the front line only. There are many lines within this battle, the Romans did not fight in a phalanx so one line losing momentum wouldn’t mean much anyways because there are reserves.
@@MrT0777 The Romans most certainly fought in a phalanx, this is well accounted, and this is simply how a phalanx fights.
I know you've got to see this all the time, bu great job. I love the channel. It's clear that you put your heart and soul into the content put out. Please keep up the great work.
Seeing the distances between lines with the crescent makes me wonder if the Roman lines began to shift towards the center to get to the closer troops. This would shorten their lines and make it easier for the Libyans to get on the Flanks. These were inexperienced troops. especially in the front. Once the Roman formations got too close, it would have been harder to redeploy to protect the flanks and would have made the Calvary charges much worse.
I have seen videos modeling how crowds respond to crushes. It would be nice to see you work with a crowd specialist to see if these mechanics would help explain the battle.
Also, another factor is the temperature. It was in the 90s F, from what I recall. That would have made the press of troops much worse as men died of heat stroke and exhaustion. These may have caused more causalities then the swords and spears. Thus maybe it was less about Hannibal's tactic and more about the lack of Discipline of the Roman troops. Perhaps, the writers would rather elevate Hannibal then call out their own ineptitude.
Great video. One formation I have used in Tabletop Wargames (with occasional success) is a slightly deeper centre which is hard to spot from the enemy line where they don't have heights to look from. In that first modelled line with the crescent bowing back, if you have reserves behind that centre then that middle section can bend back and not break as they are reinforced. The reserves don't have to be enormous, just enough to hold the push and prevent a breakthrough. In that case you do end up with an enemy bulge as they attempt to exploit the pressure but simply have a massed centre with irrelevant superiority of forces than cannot engage anyone and simply are outmanoeuvred as the flanks become their rear. I appreciate that reserves are not mentioned but most competent commanders liked to have some uncommitted troops to play with and respond to the unexpected.
Yep, this is the best timeline, I'm staying here.
LOVED this video and i want more! Look at the size of this battle! I really wanr more of this vídeos showing the real size of battles, it would be cool with a napoleonic battle as well
Oh look the title of the video rhymes how clever!
Lol. It'd have to be the 'lay' of Cannae then. I don't know why Americans pronounce it "can eye" rather than 'ka·nay' (google 'Cannae pronunciation' and Google will provide a pronunciation, which is an awesome feature of Google IMHO. I wish more people would use it)
Thank you for a truly fascinating and thought provoking analysis! Truly well done! I also appreciate how you gave appropriate credit to the gentleman whose argument served as the foundation for your wonderful work.
Are there no archaeological finds that help pinpoint the location of the battle? Not one dig? It is weird that it hasn't come up in the video. You'd think there would be a trove of archaeological information there to establish this.
@@AnExtrovertPaints weird thing about ancient battles is that ancient armies were very, very good at cleaning up the mess. Every sword, spear, piece of armor, everything that could be reused or melted down and remade was collected. Not to mention the bodies were quickly taken care of as well. So even if we had a good idea of where to dig, it would be unbelievably lucky to find anything at all.
@@tridentrex0576
I'd also think the sands of time would also help cover up battles that long ago as well.
Issue is that there is multiple battles of Cannae
Apart from the Incredible resourcefulness from ancient armies to not waste a single scrap of useful material, the river is not in the place where it used to be, so reconstruction of the battle has to take into account the lack or archeological remains, the river changing place, the inconclusive size of the battlefield, all that having to match just a handful of written sources that may or may not have biased information about the debacle. So it's pretty much guess work.
This is an excellent analysis, and raises some points I'd never thought about. I'll be doing a video on Cannae myself in a few months, and I'm definitely going to incorporate some of your ideas (with attribution, of course) when I do. Thanks for this!
Really like the spirit of the video and the study of the details of history. But I also think it’s hilarious that the opening argument was: “it doesn’t work in my video game so it probably didn’t happen” 😂
I mean, UE5 is just the medium through which the data is represented. You could have just as accurately depicted this on paper with little tiny circles to scale with the real data. It would have been harder and there would have been no visualisation of what this sort of situation could look like down on the ground but there is nothing really stopping you from drawing it out and coming to similar conclusions if you really wanted to, for the prestige of the physical medium.
That wasn't the opening argument at all. The entire point of UE5 is to realistically provide scale when diagrammes don't.
You make such great historical content. I remember watching your Rome2 videos... time flies
I was about to go to bed but this looks epic… 1hr30 minutes debunking a myth on one of the greatest battles of all time? Hell yeah
@@HistoryRebels the title is clickbait. He just suggests that the bulge was lighter, that the flanks were of less and the cavalry of more importance to the envelopment. No debunking done.
Me too
When are you Releasing the next episode in your amarcin revolution?
Hope you enjoy but please do skip ahead to our conclusion before walking away with the idea that this is some massive rewriting of Cannae at a fundamental level. Much of the arguments are about mechanics of how the same conclusion was actually reached. So different path but same ending.
@@LetLin-ps4xn I disagree. The common pop history depiction suggests the infantry flanks and the bulge were crucial for the encirclement
But Invicta suggests that is really not the case. I'm not entirely convinced about the infantry flank exposure not being relevant, but it would have taken ages for the effects to propagate throughout the front line; at least in time before the Punic center buckled. In Invicat's proposal, the battle was won with a far more conventional 'cavalry battle is won and completes the hammer and anvil' which is a lot less "special" than the 'inverted cresent bottling the Romans up' that is usually told.
to think that I originally subscribed here because of your sieges in total war, you certainly have come a long way!
In just the first couple of minutes their are so many huge presumptions and claims that it undermines the entire video, deeply disappointed they would steep this low.
1. The info on cannae varies over the sources and no serious academic claim them to be exact for obvious reasons. So disproving their own incorrect summary is just lying through manipulation.
2. Its a well established academic fact that the number of soldiers involved are extremely rough, their might have half as many or twice as many. (More commonly far fewer in alot of battles). Taking that in to account the so called calculations are to a large part worthless. You cant rum detailed calculations on numbers with such huge margins.
3. We lack full details on the terrain. Its been like two millenia and we only know roughly where it happened. Shifting the battlefield even a few kilometers makes a huge difference.
I can go on but truly pretending their are exact enough numbers to calculate it like this is just not true.
There are alot of other huge issues with this but mainly its just disappointing to see such shody work being passed on as serious research while indirectly making earlier research look bad by presenting their work like this...
To my knowledge most historians agree that the Romans likely had 76000 troops in battle and the Carthaginians 50000. What is your evidence that an "established fact" that the number of soldiers involved at Cannae was "extremely rough" to such an extreme that they could have twice as many (probably logistically immpossible) or half as many soldiers?
Dumbass
One of the things that astounds me with Cannae are the sheer numbers of casualties. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme the British & French lost about 21,000 dead to mechanised warfare. At Cannae the Romand lost more than twice this - to hand-to-hand fighting!
What are you saying? That a drawing made on an english book about something that happened thousands of year ago might not be accurate even when the sources are two authors that weren't there and wrote in a whole different language.... the only big lie is the tittle. I don't get it, your content ain't bad but why use a click bait here, if you think that the topic is kind of shallow go on and ditch it
Yo! I had to sub, way to much work into this and all the other videos. Love the content!
I thought that the Romans got defeated because they stacked their ranks super thick in response to a previous defeat.
Kind of
The defeat was essentially because, they had too many guys, so they couldn't organise properly
They knew the army was way too big to do anything complicated, so the only thing they could do, was just go forwards
A smaller army could have responded to things better, but trying to get groups to move, could cause a lot of confusion when the army is as big as it was at Cannae. So the extent of their manouever was 'march forwards and kill anyone that isn't a roman'
Which would normally have worked (and very nearly did) just through sheer numbers)
Along with a lack in Cavalry, despite trying everything they could to reinforce the cavalry, they were routed off, and gave Hannibal's cavalry the field to hammer and anvil and destroy morale.
The Roman idea for Cannae was 'this guy keeps winning, fuck it, throw EVERYTHING at him, we'll crush him with sheer numbers, no way he can pull anything fancy against this many guys'
He then proceeded to pull something fancy against that many guys
Most of the guys basically did nothing and were spooked when they started seeing pockets of carthaginians attacking them from different angles.
I think alot of Romans survived the fight since a clean envelopment was unlikely which is why rome didn't surrender.
They still had quite a few men to throw hands.
@@Canadian_Zac whats the fancy thing tho, hammer ans anviel really isnt that fancy.
@@giftzwerg7345 hiding his troops in an open field
Using the dust kicked up by the army to deploy the Lybians on the flanks without them being noticed so they could do the flanking.
As well as generally being able to keep the army together for long enough that the cavalry could win, rest, and circle back in to slam in the rear
@@giftzwerg7345pulling off the largest scale hammer and anvil ever is, unto itself, super fancy.
The adage that quantity is a quality all it’s own applies in both directions here. Hammer and anvil is a straight forward concept, but when you play it out at the scale of this battle, it becomes incredibly intricate.
Thanks!
Last time i have been this early Rome was still a kingdom.
Last I was this early, Romulu and Remus were still arguing over where to found their village.
😂
This is some incredible work! For one, seeing the detailed academic work that goes into forming these ideas and conclusions 'in real time' is fascinating and enrapturing and gives such a deeper understanding of the events and our understanding of them.
And as for the specifics of Cannae, I could see, (and really hope), that this piece could be the start of a whole new wave of discussion and understanding of the events among academics in the subject, of which you are clearly a part of.
I cannot wait to hear more about how this discussion develops, and would absolutely love to see similar pieces on other historical events. Obviously they wouldn't all be able to fundamentally shift the widely held perception of the events as this has, but even if they are more just about developing understanding and context, I think it would be just as important.
2200 years of history corrected by a random RUclipsr who’s referencing one dude. I’m convinced!
I love such videos. It gives a true (IMHO) understanding of how some important historical events happened. It provides important details and scale. Still impressed by your video of Bronze Age Collapse. Must watch more of the channel.
Given that battles take hours upon hours, a 10min walk (or if a faster response is needed a 5-6min jog) from the Libyan flanks to respond to a hypothetical breakthrough doesn‘t seem unreasonable?
Although, it feels like if there would have been a breakthrough that would have absolutely been mentioned by the historians to highlight Roman bravery and strength even if they ultimately lost, no?
The sources are Romans, probably non-combattants. I'd expect them to be at the rear of the Roman army, and thus not able to see firsthand if there was a breakthrough or not. But they could've seen that the soldiers at the center were moving fast (indicating a pursuit? Unclear if the enemy's center is simply giving ground or outright breaking) and that this momentum stopped when troops from the wings (Lybians) intervened somehow (again, they don't seem to know what they did exactly here).
But I do agree that a 5-10min walk in these circumstances is not that unreasonable, easpecially since they don't need to make it to the center, only to the flanks of the mass of Romans who are punching through (we see a diagram from a scholar showing a third of the punic line broken off, cutting the distance for the Lybians to travel in order to "charge the flank".
This is actually a great lesson in something else for all us history buffs.
Which is that the little intricacies and nuances of commanding and maneuvering an army is way way more complicated. I certainly feel like I underestimated just how complex that it could be.
Analysis of Cannae
Youve broken me. 😆 Good job man! This is some solid work.
"Historical sources say this happened, but what if it didn't? Then nothing makes sense!" Erm ok...?
Wasn't your brain turned on when you wrote this?
This is awesome and I just need the time to come back and watch it!! You guy srock and these true scale videos are one of a kind. Please keep it up!
The very idea of trying to model a battle in AutoCAD or something similar is absolutely insane but also kind of brilliant...Gary is a true legend. Thank you and thanks to everyone else who said "hey you know we have the tools now to actually test these things" and took the time to actually do it.
What app are you using to show all your sources and research? That's really neat!
oh nevermind, it's miro
Yet Hannibal did win.
Unreal 5.0 engine, as your main tool to debunk thousands of years of accepted history, is to say the least WILD and BALLSY!
quite few problems I can see with your work:
1) you start making big assumptions, then draw conclusions based on those assumptions, then, as those conclusions do not match the historical accounts, you take that as to mean the accounts are wrong, while quite obviously what it really mean is that it is your initial assumptions which are wrong. Sorry. :)
This is a flawed methodology that unfortunately affects all this work despite the fact that it does have some interesting point.
2) some of yours basic facts are just outright wrong, too long to discuss every single point here, but just one as an example, your distances for the opposite forces are pure fantasy. Ancient armies would deploy basically just out of enemy skirmishers range. That is one of the main points of having skirmishers of your own in the first place, to protect your main line from enemy skirmishers that would otherwise harass your main troops, preventing them from maneuvering and inflicting demoralizing casualties on them while staying out of their reach. So skirmishers would form up just a little out of range from enemy skirmishers, say 50 meters top, and the main line not much further back, thus your initial distance between the opposing lines is about ten times off.
Skirmishers are a troop type you dismiss several time as of little significance early on, while in reality they were extremely important especially in the opening phases of the battle. For example because they will be able to see which enemy unit they have in front without becoming locked in close combat, so they can report it and eventually screen the main line allowing it to redeploy to best match the enemy formation... (but that is another story.) You later assume that they were used for all sort of other things except for skirmishing, and that therefore they were very important after all, but not because they were good at skirmishing, which is again just another example of 1 above, sorry. :)
3) Another issue you completely seem to ignore is that ancient generals did not have the ability to survey the situation the same way as you do with your 21st century computer models. You are zooming around and making all sort of clever speculations on a global vision of the field that nobody ever had. The reality is that those general on the field had very little to absolutely zero idea of what was going on, something that is easy to appreciate when you look at your own simulation in first person view (which BTW ignore the dust that once the battle started would have reduced visibility to a couple of dozen meters at best as related in the sources). Even after the battle they could only guess what actually happened exactly, trying to patch together the narrations of the survivors, each reporting a fragmented view of a 20-30 meters area out of a 3 km wide picture, as in a gigantic puzzle. At the very least however these generals would have had some reports from the front line. Their troops on the other hand, especially the front lines engaged in combat, had zero idea of what was going on more than a couple of hundred meters away at best, so they could not know, understand or react to what is happening in other parts of the field. That I think is the real reason behind the bulge formation and it really highlight the tactical genius of Hannibal and his deep understanding of the battle mechanics: what will happen is that the first Roman unit will make contact in the center of the line because that is where the Carthaginians are positioned most forward. The Roman troops at each side of this unit at this point will have no opponents immediately to their front, so will naturally start to shift toward the engagement, starting a flow that tend to contract the overall front. The first Carthaginian troops contacted will soon be beaten back, and basically will run back between the units just a little back at their side, which are still fresh. These in turn will now temporarily halt the Romans to their front, those at the side of the first unit that made contact, while these will continue to pursue the broken enemy at their front. This will cause them to become overflanked and surrounded by enemies, which at the very least will slow down their momentum. Meantime the Roman troops at the side of those that are now engaged, at this point will still have no opponents immediately to their front, so again they will shift toward the engagement at the center, further contracting the overall front. Back in the rear, with no idea of what is actually going on, what will be obvious however is that some friendly troops are moving forward while others are not, so again there will be a tendency to move toward and behind those that are advancing. This dynamic will continue to repeat itself drawing more and more of the Romans units further toward the center as they advance, and will eventually turn their whole battle lines into a gigantic disordered wedge with a monstrous traffic jam in the center. THAT mess is what becomes now possible for the Carthaginians to encircle and compress, something that would never be possible for them to do to well ordered Roman legionary battle array . The very shape into which Hannibal has deployed his troops has already determined beforehand the way the troops will eventually move and how the battle will inescapably proceed: once it started there is nothing anyone can do about it, it was simply impossible to control that many troops in the field.
You kind of get to that point yourself around 1.07, but then once you realize that, you can see that the actual depth of the crescent is pretty much irrelevant, and in any case there is nobody ever fighting a retreat for kilometers, but just one unit at a time falling back behind the one immediately to the side and further back, one after the other. Not impossible at all.
4) Once the Roman center is running forward and the rest of their army has basically started collapsing on itself toward the center, from the point of view of the Libyans not yet engaged on the wings it will appear as if the Romans are now mostly moving sideways away from them. Quite apart of a potential morale boost that this may give them, it would now be possible for these well ordered, fresh units of experienced veterans to turn to face what has become the side of the Roman formation which is now slowly assuming the shape of a giant triangular wedge, again nothing impossible here. So facing these still well ordered shieldwalls of spearmen there would now be the flank of the roman units, and as the Libyans start marching forward (that is toward the center of the battle, having turned first) the Romans centuriae engaged to what is now their side will naturally try to turn and face this new enemy and in doing so will further compress and disorder the center of the whole formation behind them.
That the depth of the Libyan formations on the side is not enough to "flank" the entire Roman formation is irrelevant, because it is the Roman formation that is basically flowing in front of them (or rather at their side) as it moves forward and to the center; all the Libyan spearmen have to do is just to keep pushing them and squeeze their ranks, turning a unit at the time as the Romans pass by. Eventually the entire Roman formation will be flanked by them. From the point of view of the Romans is will seem that the Libyans are attacking them on the flanks, which is exactly what Polybius tell us it happened.
continue below...
5) At this point the only part of the Roman army that could possibly still have maintained some order and could still maneuver would be the most rear ranks. Unfortunately for them it is on the rear of these very units that the Carthaginian cavalry, after having forced their opponents to flee, now falls on. Even assuming all these maniples did not panic from the sudden appearance of the enemy at their back (having no idea of what is happening anywhere else, it certainly was quite unsettling!) even assuming they all maintained perfect cohesion and ordered ranks and followed they centurions orders in the most resolute and professional way, what could they do, but turn and face the enemy? And now you have it, as the cavalry closed the lid on what has become a basically complete encirclement, except probably for some of the foremost center that, first to fight, by now may well have broken through the Carthaginian lines, and in doing so would now find themselves isolated in enemy territory, sandwiched between the enemy army and the enemy camp, exhausted and disordered, and cut out from their own lines. Hardly in position to affect the outcome of the immense slaughter that has begun on the other side of the enemy line they just crossed... not that they could possibly knew of it at this point, mind you!
6) so yes, I think a breakthrough in the center did most likely happened, and I think what the Carthaginians did about it is pretty much nothing, for the very simple fact that there wasn't much they could do about it, again even assuming that they "knew" about it, in the sense of an officers of adequate rank having an adequate force at his command being informed in time of it. I think it is safe to assume that visibility from the camp was not good enough to understand and react to this immediately but most likely news of the Roman breakthrough would eventually arrive and possibly some of the camp garrison may have been dispatched to deal with them. If the battered Romans did not flee I think it's reasonable to assume that at the very least they would have tried to make back to their camp at this point, and that is probably how those approximately 14 thousand Romans managed to escape and survive the slaughter. It is certainly what had happened at the battle of Trasimene a year earlier, which BTW IMHO is where and when Hannibal saw this kind of mechanic playing out and where he took the inspiration for Cannae. He may have seen it happen at a much smaller scale, as he watched from his dominating position on the hills while his forces fell down on the Roman line stretched along the lake shore. He may have noticed as the individual maniples maintained cohesion but naturally tended to move following the flow of the battle, inexorably attracted toward the points where their comrades succeeded in pushing back the enemy. Faced with overwhelming odds an year later, he may have thought to try and use that to turn the enemy numbers against themselves, and drive them into a cascading overlap that would eventually create an inescapable whirlpool of chaos and confusion.
He may, but now let's be clear: this is just me making things up, this is pure speculation, unsupported by any fact. He may as well have drawn the line in a crescent shape in honor to Tanit and hoped for the best... :)
7) last, but really, no serious historian takes any of Livy accounts in much considerations, he is writing with a clear agenda, has been proven to bend facts to conform to this agenda in countless occasions, had no understanding whatsoever of the reality of warfare and all his "facts" are just hand picked as needed from earlier sources and adjusted to fit his narrative. His figures can pretty mush be disregarded all together as well as his general narration.
After all that, I have to say I think you are sincere in your endeavor and while I disagree with both your premises and your conclusions, and I do find your methods rather amateurish (not offense intended, I'm certainly no scholar and I do consider myself an amateur at best, but I know enough of historical research methods to see that this is not professional work, and I do think it should be presented as such) I find however very interesting your ideas. In particular I have always been much fascinated by the true scale of ancient battles myself, so while I don't think there are "historical misconceptions" to correct here (at least as far as the actual historical views of the battle are concerned) you certainly raise extremely valid points in regard to representing, modeling and also wargaming ancients battle, something which I would consider not a little praise!
So for that and for an inspiring and original video I would like to thank you! :)
So cool man, love this channel and the more academic direction its going in.
The Roman’s wrote about their own loss? I forgot if anyone found Hannibal and got his version of it.
Chances are, though, the Romans screwed up royally, in many ways, and this was the best way to explain it.
Practically no Carthaginian writings survive at all - or at least none have been catalogued and translated, if any happen to exist either in bulk archaeological collections or still out in the field. The only partial works that survive through intermediate (Greek and Roman) translations are a short work on agriculture, the account of Hanno the Navigator's voyage around Africa, and some religious / tombstone inscriptions from the Carthage Tophet
“Babies are delicious and we are allergic to salt.” - The entirety of remaining Carthaginian written text, definitely not ghost written by Cato