Dusmanul la Poarta!-Partea-34!

 1-Acest articol este copiat !

2-Istoria ramane pasiunea mea nr-1.

“A hotch-potch of the riff-raff of all nationalities.”

On a hot August day in 216 BC, 80,000 Roman legionaries marched forward with confidence, mixed with the inevitable terror of horrifying battle, that they would crush a Carthaginian army half their size. Facing east, the morning sun shone into their eyes, while the wind whipped up the dust from the march of such a host into their faces too. Over such noise, and amongst so many men, it was impossible for the average legion to see what was happening as they marched forward. The only gage they had of their progress was the maintaining of their forward momentum, knowing when they came to blows, they could use their superior numbers to shove their way through the Punic army.

As they pressed forward, those who could see took heart from the enemy formation. The Gauls and Celtiberians in the centre was protruding forward from the rest of the Roman line – evidently the barbarians were not even disciplined enough to hold a battle line! As the two sides clashed, Roman supremacy began to tell – slowly, the Gauls in the centre began giving ground and moving backwards. Spurred on by this success, the Roman bulldozer pressed forward and the Gauls began to fall back. Just as at the Trebia, it looked like the Roman legions would again plough through the centre of the Carthaginian line. As the centre of Hannibal’s line began to buck backwards, more and more legionaries piled into the centre to attack this weak point and crush the invader. Varro’s plan was working.

On the flanks, the cavalry battle descended into a barbaric melee, with many of the Iberian and Celtic horsemen dismounting to find more space. The Punic cavalry quickly got the upper hand over their overwhelmed Roman opponents, and offered no quarter as they pursued them relentlessly. On the opposite flank the Numidians kept the Romans occupied, frustrating them with volleys of javelins while not engaging in hand-to-hand combat. After his victory on the left, Hasdrubal then kept his cavalry together rather than allowing them to chase the Roman right, and instead hammered this force into the Roman left, who now broke and were routed.

Despite defeat in the cavalry battle, the infantry battle was still going Rome’s way, and they were confident that the triumphant horsemen would be too busy giving chase to their defeated cavalry to affect the outcome of the foot soldiers. As the Caltic and Iberian trooped in the centre buckled inwards, they did not rout but rather took one measured step back at a time. Hannibal instructed his infantry into a deliberate retreat, pulling his centre back and inviting the Roman legions to pile in. In doing so, he turned the strength of the Roman army into a weakness, and as more and more legionaries piled towards the centre to press the apparently retreating army, their line condensed and moved into the space that was vacated. This made inverted the shape of Hannibal’s line, now turning it into a crescent around the Romans, with his veteran African troops on the flanks, while the fallen back Punic centre now held firm.

The Roman army was losing its cohesion as it pressed into the central gap, with legionaries from the back pushing forward and pressing their way into the centre. Soon these men were so tightly packed together that the strength of the Roman army became its weakness, as 80,000 men found themselves in a giant crush. Some of the legionaries in the centre were packed in so closely that they could not even wield their weapons. In an age without modern communication, and on a dusty and noisy day, there was no easy way to communicate to the troops to alleviate the crush, those at the back still thinking they were pressing on the break the Punic line, while their comrades in the centre were dying. The African troops now closed in on the sides of the Roman behemoth, assailing the legions from three directions.

The Romans naturally formed a wedge to try and punch through the Carthaginian centre, now that their flanks were assailed. At this point, as the legions pressed ever deeper, Hannibal ordered the African infantry to turn inwards, creating an encirclement, and the earliest example of a pincer movement. Now the Carthaginian cavalry, instead of spending the day pursuing the defeated Roman horse, wheeled around and attacked the back of the legions, susceptible to a cavalry attack due to the inevitably looser formation of soldiers at the rear. With the attack on the flanks and rear, the Roman juggernaut now ground to an abrupt halt. Amidst the dust, the heat and the noise, the first sign of problems the average legionary would have had was when their line stopped moving forward. The Romans were now enclosed in a pocket, surrounded on all sides like fish in a net.

Polybius wrote: "as their outer ranks were continually cut down, and the survivors forced to pull back and huddle together, they were finally all killed where they stood.” Livy described: "So many thousands of Romans were dying. Some, whom their wounds, pinched by the morning cold, had roused, as they were rising up, covered with blood, from the midst of the heaps of slain, were overpowered by the enemy. Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared, made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves.” Hannibal’s army now formed an indomitable wall to surround the legionaries on all sides, and the massacre began. There could be no retreat for the legions now, and there would be no mercy.