History youtuber Invicta modeled the battle of Cannae and thinks the encirclement we are told in the histories was logistically impossible.>https://youtu.be/McgnF0eubC4?si=gtNS4mTkE8ewPFCLThoughts? Not shilling for him.
>NOTHING EVER HAPPENS: ANCIENT EDITIONTired of this ongoing trend. Marathon went through the same shit and was vindicated time and time again.
>>17273153Even before this video, I’ve always had trouble with the account we are given for Cannae though. Everyone seems to take Livy and Polybius at their word (though what choice do we have), but every time I see a recreation of the battle, there’s that suspension of disbelief moment where you have to accept that the Punic wings somehow enveloped the kilometer-long Roman lines and the Romans could do nothing but accept their fate.
>>17273164Extraordinary maneuvers required extraordinary soldiers. His African veterans definitely fit the bill.
>>17273164you're just not capable of understanding how hard it is to give orders to a force of that size, much less successfully pull out of melee contact without causing your forces to immediately rout
>>17273172>>17273215But with how deep the Roman lines were, why couldn’t they just wheel around the triarii line to face the Punic wings at their back? They’d then have essentially been fighting in a circle, which wouldn’t necessarily have doomed the army. It’s not like the entirety of the Roman line was engaged in combat. Many of them would have been hundreds of feet from the point of contact and would have still been able to receive orders and reposition as needed.I haven’t finished the video though, so I’m waiting to see what he says (although there will be part 2 apparently).
>>17273126It seems doubtful since it never happened again even
>>17273227Chaos and morale
>>17273126If your was in the field and seen historical recreation you know it's bullshit.First of all you simply cannot make sense of what is happening from the point of view of the realistic observers looking at battle from surface. If you look at battle videos recorded from multiple drones it's possible. But make accurate depiction of battle from real word observer? Please you only see lines adjustents to you and further it's total chaos and fog of war.
>>17273227>>17273126My issue is this. We aren't reading the Carthaginians account we are reading the losers account. And yes they wouldn't want it be too embarrassing, but honestly, what other options are there? Like Hannibal didn't have more manpower, the Roman's wouldn't have engaged with a lesser force. Like cool he says it's less than likely. But that's the whole point of this battle. It's why we remember it after more than 2000 years. He needs to say what happened with some level of evidence, not just this wasn't likely. I mean there are several events like the Miracles of the house of Brandenburg that sound like a third grader wrote history.
>>17273254Famously in the west, no, but yes it has. Usually with horse archer armies, or ones with superior tech. But an inferior force absolutely has surrounded a superior one since Cannea.
>>17273227Who would order the triarri to the rear both consults were supporting the cavalry and had been routed. Imagine officer wise most are junior, after previous battles, and they are scared too, the last too armies were beaten, so they are Pre shook. Cannea only makes sense as battle in a series.
>>17273227The Carthaginian line was giving ground falsely, which causes the Roman front to give chase thinking they're about to win the battle.The rear line have no choice but to follow the front into the same trap, despite the terrible situation they have the most chance of winning staying togheter.And as someone else pointed out, the Roman commanders where taken out of the fight before this happends.
>>17273126They are probably right. Sources on the battle were written decades after it happened, and the tactics do feel like something an armchair general would think of.
>>17274087It might not have been a deliberate 9001 IQ move by Hannibal. It's entirely possible that the course of the battle was something like>Roman doomstack engages Hannibal's line>Carthaginians in the centre are pushed back by sheer mass>cavalry engagement on flanks >Roman cavalry are beaten, causing loss of Roman commanders>lack of chain of command causes confusion in Roman officers>lines behind just keep pushing because lol what else are we gonna do>Roman infantry just starts crushing each other which makes the front lose momentum>command is now impossible and the Roman army is caught in a self-inflicted crowd disaster>Carthaginians smell blood and just start massacring everyone in front of themIt makes for a better story if it were actually all part of some epic keikaku where the headstrong Romans fell into Hannibal's perfectly executed encirclement. But it was probably more like a giant Hillsborough disaster
the Romans actually won at Cannae, don't believe the (((Punic))) lies
>>17273126https://news-zp.ru/society/2024/11/18/407497Only the Nazi white pigs enslave them. Go to hell you Nazi retard subhuman pig
>The Big Lie of Cannae >(We have a problem...)
>>17273227They were all squeezed together. They couldn't breath or raise their shields...like battle of the bastards in GOT. The line was compressed.
>>17273227The idea is that the Roman army couldn't respond because it didn't have the organisational structure, capable leadership or soldier discipline necessary to defend themselves. As a result the Roman army underwent a modernisation.
>>17273227>why couldn’t they just wheel around the triarii line to face the Punic wings at their back?The command would have to spot the need to perform it, then give the order to the entire army which is spread out over multiple miles and then the army would basically have to break formation and march in line for about two miles around its rear while being harassed by Carthaginian cavalry until they can set up the line rear facing front line, as they're being squeezed in by the rear facing triarii. Oh and for the entire time the front line troops would be seeing their backup people just walk away from them.Just giving the order to perform the maneuver would basically be telling the entire army that they were around to be encircled and completely fucked.
>>17273126>>17274322I'm 10 minutes in. In case he doesn't acknowledge it, wouldn't Occam's Razor suggest that the numbers were just exaggerated rather than the tactics were different?I mean, I always found it hard to believe they had the logistics to feed 80,000+ men overseas in that era.
>>17273126I watched the video and thanks to his simulation I now think the official story is true. He says himself:>Carthaginian cavalry was more condensed than normal>the Carthaginian cavalry defeated the Roman cavalry>now it was free to stretch the 2km necessary to cover the whole Roman backSeeing tens of thousands of heavy cavalry running at you would be enough to cause you to panic. Only a small fraction of each legion/unit would have to panic to cause disarray and chaos among your troops. Now you have a panicked army trying to get out of the way of the cavalry charge. They can't go forward, they can't go to the sides, meanwhile the Carthaginians would just need to hold formation and let the Romans kill themselves off of your shields at spears as they try to break away from encirclement.
>>17276918Right, he ends up not so much disproving Cannae (that part was clickbait) but challenging the idea that the Libyan wings eventually enveloped the entire Roman army from the rear and had them penned in. When it seems clear that the cavalry and maybe even skirmishers had a much larger role to play, and sent the tightly-packed Roman infantry trampling into each other.I’m still perplexed that it wasn’t even enough for the Roman front to simply breakthrough the weak Carthaginian center. The weak Carthaginian center was giving way for most of the battle, but it then stood its ground and held back an onslaught of panicking Romans crashing into them? Even if you’re well protected behind your shield and can jab disorganized Romans with your spear, surely at somehow you’d be overwhelmed as a mass of Romans crashes into your ranks. Why would they be immune to the effects of the crowd surge / panic?
>>17277321>Why would they be immune to the effects of the crowd surge / panic?They were veteran badasses while the Romans were the equivalent of Zerglings.Cannae was years into the war. Hannibal had marched his army all the way from Spain over the Alps, half of Italy all through hostile territory and rugged terrain. He had never once lost to Rome at that point and always against superior numbers. Anyone not ok with his style, the army or the cause had PLENTY of opportunity to desert and most likely did, leaving only confident badasses.If you were at Cannae on the Carthaginian side, you had 100% confidence in Hannibal and victory.
>>17274329this.actually the battle never even happened. rome defeated carthage in 800bce
>>17273126anyone who believes ancient battles actually involved 100k men is an idiothow are you gonna feed that many people? just foraging? more importantly, where are you gonna find that much water, you need 2 litres of water every day. That basically makes the routes you could travel severely limitedall this ancient sources can practically treated the same way as modern historic fiction, only less credible
>>17277752>how are you gonna feed that many people? You do realize that you can carry rations like dried meat and nuts and grain that can be ground by the soldiers into bread? Are you retarded? >more importantly, where are you gonna find that much water, you need 2 litres of water every day.Waterskins and barrels full of water carried by the baggage trains. You fucking retard
>>17273126The morale factor is real, when we trained gas one was used by mistake before we were prepared, one guy broke line and i followed without a second thought. Of course it was a shamefull moment and when the real exercise was there i prepared myself to endure to completion, but it humbled me to the phenomena of breaking lines.
>>17277752>just foragingThey carried it by land and seas. Every single soldier had multiple pockets of grains and salt and a canteen. Reserves marched along the ranks with the foot infantry with large bags of the stuff. Looting and pillaging sustained them for more expensive meals. Anything that couldn't be carried by foot was transported by convoys, wagons, and naval routes supplemented the rest. The sea route was so crucial because they could transport tremendous amounts of grains with peak efficiency. Many wars were lost because they failed at sea.According to Dr David A. Graff, thousands of two men cart teams were paired with a marching company each carrying 180 liters of grain each which was enough to supply themselves for seventy-five days for 400 miles, travelling roughly 16 miles a day. They were supplemented by a larger naval army, tiptoeing next to the invasion route and arriving beforehand to deliver goods.
