Leadership is a very strange quality that can manifest itself in different ways. In the immediate term (among Kossians, anyway), Harry Reid is associated with good leadership, and George Bush is associated with bad leadership (and ignorance, stubbornness, arrogance, pompous fools, and all-around assholes).
All throughout history, leaders have risen and made themselves either universally respected or universally reviled. A bad leader can lead a people or a nation to its destruction. A good leader can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
And a great leader can do that so decisively and so unexpectedly that victory is total.
So I ask that you follow me for a trip far back in time as I bring you to Italy, circa 2200 years ago ...
By 216 B.C.E., Carthage had been waging the
Second Punic War with the Roman Republic for two years. And in those two years, the Republic had a major whoopin' handed to them. Hannibal Barca, fabled Carthaginian general, had made out with huge victories over the Romans at the
River Trebia and
Lake Trasimene, both major disasters suffered on Italian soil. Rome knew that they would need massive force to defeat this man and his troops, and they knew they needed an army soon.
In 217 B.C.E., the Roman Senate had appointed Fabius Maximus as dictator of the Roman state. Fabius was very much opposed to fighting Hannibal in an open battle, as he did not want to see more Roman soldiers die needlessly. He favored a war of attrition, wishing to drain Hannibal of resources and men until the Carthaginian could do no more but surrender. Fabius knew that it was the only way to defeat this bane of Rome.
However, the Senate had different ideas. In 216, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus were elected to the office of consul, an unusual act for the Senate (as opposed to the Comitia Centuriata), for the purpose of fighting Hannibal in battle and to crush him. Soon after, an army of ~88,000 men was assembled. Sixteen legions of 5500 men each (eight Roman, eight Italian) all for the battle that the reactive Senators felt needed to happen.
By this time, Hannibal was moving from the battlefields of northern Italy to Greek southern Italy. His army needed supplies, and he needed allies among the populace. Lucky for him, he managed to get a good chunk of the boot of Italy to defect to Carthage, and gained 5,000 men to his cause. Still, even with the defections, Hannibal's army still only numbered 55,000, a deficit of 33,000 men. His multi-national army of Gauls, Iberians, Greeks, North Africans, and even a few Italians would not be able to push the Roman lines back. He would need major help from the gods, and a little creative thinking.
It was at a town called Cannae on the Aufidus river (now called the Ofanto) that the Roman army finally caught up with the Carthaginians. Paullus opposed fighting Hannibal in the open terrain before him, fearing what could be done by his opponent. He would have preferred to fight another day. But it was Varro's turn to lead the troops, and Varro was all in favor of defeating the Carthaginians in open battle. So on August 2, 216 B.C.E., both armies met on the banks of the river to do battle (it's not known whether or not the fighting was on the left or right bank, but it is certain that Hannibal took the western position).
The field had 70,000 Romans and 50,000 Carthaginians waiting for battle (after leaving 10,000 and 5,000 troops to guard their respective camps). The Roman formation was fairly straightforward for the time: infantry in the center, light skirmishers in front, and cavalry split evenly between the flanks. However, Varro added more depth to his army by shortening the lines of his infantry to match the length of the Carthaginian front line. Thus, he set his army very center-heavy, almost as an impenetrable wall.
Hannibal had set his army up in a very strange fashion: his skirmishers were in front, and his infantry formation was that of an outward crescent, with his center comprised of his lesser-quality Gallic and Iberian troops, the edges made of his hardened North African mercenaries, and his cavalry more numerous on his left flank and all placed in front of the African mercenaries. An odd formation, if ever one existed.
The battle started with the usual fare: the skirmishers attacked each other, inflicting damage on both sides. Then the skirmishers retreated, and the infantry moved forward. The Roman infantry marched into the Carthaginian center, and caused the line to buckle and retreat. This went on for a little while as the center kept falling back to a new position and the Roman infantry pressed forward. Now this is where it gets different.
Hannibal had qualities about him that made him almost indistinguishable from George Bush. He was arrogant, stubborn, and probably an asshole. He was a pompous man who believed in his own superiority. But this was not misplaced superiority. Unlike Bush, Hannibal was not ignorant of reality, and his big picture was clear: Roma delenda est. Everything he did was for the destruction of Rome.
And the Romans ignored the key characteristic of Hannibal: he was one clever bastard.
Roman war strategy was centered on continual advancements on the battlefield. The army was to march forward until the enemy was either driven away or destroyed by brute force. It had worked before, so why not use it again?
But Varro did not know that prior to the battle, Hannibal had ordered his infantry to feign a rout and draw the enemy soldiers further into the Carthaginian lines to disorganize them.
As Hannibal's Celtic and Iberian infantry was falling back and changing from a convex to concave formation, the heavy Spanish cavalry on the left flank charged forward and quickly routed the cavalry on the Roman right flank. The cavalry then ran behind Roman lines to attack the cavalry on the Roman left flank along with the light Numidian cavalry of the Carthaginian right flank, thus completing the rout of the Roman cavalry (y'all got that?). And while this was going on, the African mercenaries weren't doing a damn thing. Only after the Roman infantry had fallen behind them did the Africans started moving into the Roman edges. By this time the Romans were a convoluted mess, with lines no longer existing, and they found themselves surrounded on three sides. Finally, the victorious cavalry charged into the back of the Roman lines, halting the Roman forward advance, and the African flanks finally attacked the sides. This resulted in the complete encirclement and destruction of the Roman army. Hannibal's victory was complete.
Of the 70,000 Roman troops on the field, 60,000 died (including, ironically, Paullus) and the remaining 10,000 were captured. The 10,000 men guarding the camp survived, as well as about 6,000 men who deserted the slaughter, escaping to fight another day. And the Carthaginian casualties?
5,600. Five thousand of those were Gauls or Iberians at the center. Most of the remaining dead and wounded were from his exhausted cavalry.
This battle was the single bloodiest day in ancient history. More people died in this one day battle than Americans who died in Vietnam. Alexander the Great had fewer troops when he crossed the Dardanelles. And the psychological loss was tremendous. There was no one in Rome who didn't know a soldier who died that day.
And this defeat caused something to happen in Rome that had never happened since the city engineers built walls: people panicked. The leaders of the Republic authorized the last recorded human sacrifice in Roman history to appease for the wrongs they committed which led to the deaths of so many of their people. Furthermore, Hannibal's exposure of the defects in the Roman war strategy made the people of the Republic scared that the thought of the general marching onto Rome could come true.
With this victory, Hannibal had sealed his legacy in today's history books. It is the best illustrated example of a smaller, less supplied army defeating a much larger force through sheer strategy. And the totality of the victory was so great that the ancient Greek city of Capua defected, giving him a city which could winter his troops that year. Rome was so terrified of this man that they threatened harsh retribution for any other city which defected to Carthaginian control.
Hannibal had delivered the most bloody and powerful victory of the war for his side, and this marked the highest fortunes that the Carthaginians would reach in the entire span of the conflict. As history notes, Carthage would later lose the war, and Hannibal would be sent into exile to the Seleucid Empire under Antiochus III, where he would spend the rest of his days.
But his victory at Cannae proved why history has judged Hannibal a great leader: it is not the stronger but the smarter who will win the day.